


Brinkmanship

by Em_Jaye



Series: The Long Way Around [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), F/M, Gen, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Post-Canon Fix-It, Pre-Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers, The Author Regrets Everything, Time Travel, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-05-19 07:46:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19352590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: brink·man·ship /ˈbriNGkmənˌSHip/nounthe art or practice of pursuing a dangerous policy to the limits of safety before stoppingAlso known as a mission involving Steven Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, six Infinity Stones, and one misbehaving method of time travel.





	1. Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Hoo boy. Here we go. I've been threatening to do this for at least a month and I think I've finally chewed everyone's ears off enough about it to get it rolling. This is the first in what is likely going to be another very long series.
> 
> I mean, unless you guys totally hate it, I guess. In which case I probably won't keep posting.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy this first piece and keep in mind, this particular fic is mostly just a set-up and a means to a Shieldshocky end. 
> 
> :-*

_Dance_

 

Maybe he’d done this all wrong.

The thought occurred to him the moment Peggy stepped into his arms and laced her fingers with his.

Maybe he should have saved this for last. For when he was done, and everything was set to rights again. If he’d waited— _but he’d already waited so goddamn long—_ just a little longer, he wouldn’t have to leave when their dance was over.

He could stay.

Here.

With Peggy.

Here with Peggy, where her dark hair felt so soft beneath his cheek. Where she was molded so close against him that he could feel her heart beating against his. Where the scent of that floral perfume he still remembered after all these years filled his nose and made him dizzy with relief.

He could stay here. With her. In 1945 where they’d be safe and happy, and everything would happen the way it was supposed to.

Before the glow of the temptation of that idea became too enticing, Peggy shifted in his arms and tilted her face to his. Her eyes fluttered closed and her long, dark lashes fanned against the tops of her pale cheeks as he leaned down and kissed her. Like he’d wanted to do for so long. Kissed her like it wasn’t the last time they would see each other—like the world wasn’t ending around them. Like it wasn’t life and death.

She leaned up into him for one long, perfect moment. Just long enough to make the decision for him. He could stay. Be selfish and give himself this life, this future he’d wanted for so long.

But when his eyes opened, Peggy’s were troubled. “How long do we have?” she asked softly, not stopping the way they were swaying to the smooth trumpet solo.

He blinked. “We have…” he stumbled. _Forever._  He wanted to say that they had forever—that he didn’t care what happened to the universe anymore, he wasn’t going to make the mistake of leaving her again.

She lifted her eyebrows at the same time the corner of her red lips moved to sad, but knowing smiling. “I don’t know how you’re here,” she said, still close enough that her curls brushed his cheek when she shook her head. “But I know I’m only borrowing you.” That smile fell another fraction of an inch. She raised her hand from the back of his neck and let her fingers drift over his forehead and sweep across his cheek. “You’re not my Steve,” she said with a lump he could hear in her throat. “Are you?”

He felt his heart stutter. “I am. But not…” he sighed and shook his head. “Not the way you’re thinking.”

Her throat bobbed and she nodded. “I’m never going to find him, am I?”

He closed his fingers tighter around hers. “You will,” he promised. “Just…not for a very long time.”

Her dark eyes turned glassy and her expression crumpled. “I’m so sorry—”

With a twist deep in his chest, Steve shook his head. “No, no,” he kept his voice low, not trusting it not to crack if he brought it above a whisper. “You have nothing to apologize for, Peg. The things you’re going to do—the people you’re going to help…” he exhaled steadily, forcing his own tears back and away. “You and Howard? You’re going to change the world while you’re looking for me.” He said, reminding himself of the truth he was sharing. “I didn’t come here to ask you to apologize for any of it.”

There was a little voice in the back of his mind that told him he could tell her other things. He could tell her about the life she was going to have—the rich, full one with the husband and the children and grandchildren and Congressional Medal of Honor. He could tell her that she’d tell him all about it someday, when she was having a particularly lucid day at the hospital, recounting stories about her family that made them both laugh.  He could tell her that she was going to be so happy and so respected and so _loved_ by so many people.

But Steve didn’t tell her any of that. Because all of that felt very far away when she was standing so close to him, invading his senses with her eyes and her hair and the soft strength he’d always admired. He didn’t say it because none of that had happened yet. Because right then—in the living room of the little yellow house she had rented for a few months in Washington after VE Day, holding her close and listening to a song he’d always loved—she was still his girl. She hadn’t moved on. She hadn’t found anyone else. She was still his. And even if he told himself a million times that it was wrong, there was a part of him that desperately wanted to stay and keep it that way.

Her thumb brushed his cheek again and she blinked away the tears that had welled in her eyes. “So why did you come here, then?”

Steve offered her a half-smile and forced himself to be brave and say the one thing that had been sitting on the tip of his tongue for so many years. “To tell you that I love you, Peggy.” Peggy bit her lip and dropped her head at that, resting her forehead on his collarbone. He felt two tears seep into his shirt and he kissed the side of her head, holding her just a little tighter before he smiled again. “And because you still owed me a dance.”

Her laugh was soft and wet with the tears she was trying not to spill. She looked back up at him and nodded, more to herself than in response to anything he’d said. Her hand fell back to his shoulder and snaked again to the back of his neck. “Will you stay for just one more song?”

He nodded. “Of course I will.”

But as the music faded into the next song on the record and Peggy settled them into a slow, swaying embrace, Steve knew it would be that much harder to walk away when it was done.

And that much harder to once again shoulder the weight of his responsibilities. To shoulder the weight of the stones and the mission he had yet to even begin.

To ignore the time stone and it’s glittering, emerald reminder that if he wanted to, he _could_ stay forever.

And no one would ever know.


	2. Soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of liberties taken here, my friends. Especially regarding how the Pym Particles and the time-travel nanotech work together? Because if I'm honest, life is short, and I can only spend so much of my time on the MCU wiki, trying to make sense of M&M's nonsensical, nonexistent time travel rules. Hope you can overlook my speculation--it's not the most important part of the story.
> 
> Have I mentioned that I love you guys? Because I love you guys.

_Soul_

 

As the wind atop the mountain prison bit into his skin, he stood, slack-jawed at the figure before him. The Red Skull looked and sounded exactly as he remembered and with the first word from his gruesome lips, Steve was transported back to the cockpit of the Valkyrie, teetering on the edge of his very dark memories.

“I must say, this is a surprise, Captain,” Red Skull said. His voice lacked malice. He sounded almost amused. An old man greeting a friend stopping by unannounced for a cup of tea. “It’s been such a long time.”

“Not long enough,” Steve said evenly. He glanced around the cave, trying not to focus on any one aspect too hard. He didn’t want to look at the fluttering hem of Shmidt’s tattered cloak—or the very apparent absence of feet and legs beneath it. “As far as retirement homes go,” he continued, forcing himself to stay sharp. “You could have found something a little nicer.”

“You can save your small talk, Hero,” Shmidt spat the last word at his feet. His voice little more than a hiss above the howling wind. “I don’t have what you seek.”

“My sources say otherwise,” Steve responded, taking a cautious step forward.

“All I had has been taken—my work is done. I linger only as a punishment. A spirit without purpose,” he glanced down at his fluttering form. “A soldier with no mission.” There was the hint of a sardonic smile on those cracked, red lips. “It is hell,” he assured him. “If there’s any justice in this universe, you’ll see what I mean one day.”

“Maybe one day,” Steve agreed with a nod. “But I’m still on mission for now. And you’re my first stop.”

Shmidt turned away from him in a sweep of cloak that sounded like fluttering bats’ wings. It resonated off the stone cavern around them. “You do not listen, Captain,” he said. “The stone is—”

“Gone,” Steve finished for him. “I know. I’m here to return it.”

A scoff echoed back from the edge of the cliff. “If you had the stone you could not return it.”

He felt his eyebrows lift and the first real hint of doubt twist into his stomach. “No?” he asked. “Is there a rule?”

“No one ever would,” he assured him. “To possess the stone is to hold every soul in your hand. To take any you wish. To recall the essence of anyone you lost.” Schmidt turned back to face him. “Surely one who has lost so much would not be foolish enough to give it away.”

“I don’t want to give it away,” Steve said, reminding himself once again of his mission. “I just want to give it back.” It was his turn to smirk as he held out his hand to display the golden stone that hovered above his open palm. “I’d think you’d say thank you,” he continued. “If the Soul Stone is back where it belongs, doesn’t that give you your mission back?”

“So generous, Captain,” Red Skull shook his head. “Surely you understand the risk you take in returning the stone to my care. The damage that could be done should it fall into the wrong hands.”

Steve swallowed hard as unbidden memories filled his mind. Bucky, collapsing into a pile of dust before his eyes. Sam last look of confusion before he evaporated. The death tolls. The planes that had dropped from the air, killing thousands more that day. The cars and trains that had collided or gone off the rails because their drivers had turned to ash. The screaming of orphaned children and babies that still haunted his dreams.

_You brought them back,_ he reminded himself. _You brought them all back._

“It’s not an entirely benevolent gesture,” he said out loud, forcing those thoughts from his head and closing his hand around the stone again. “There is something I need in return.”

“A man with all the power in the universe,” Red Skull mused. “What could you possibly want from me?”

“The woman who sacrificed herself for the stone,” Steve said firmly. “I want her back.”

Another gruesome grin. “Your lady love, Captain?“

“My best friend,” he corrected. “You cost me one of those once before,” he reminded. “Bring her back and we’ll call it square.”

“Or what?”

He shrugged, hoping it came off as careless. He had nothing with which to bargain—nothing but his own strength to fall back on if his bluff didn’t work. “Or I leave and take the stone with me. Let you rot here, without purpose, for the rest of eternity.”

“Your friend’s sacrifice was noble,” Red Skull went on. “She died a hero. What would you be doing to her legacy if you brought her back now?”

“I’d be bringing her home,” Steve said, sounding more certain than he felt that this was going to work. “Where she belongs—with her family.” He shook his head. “Her death didn’t have anything to do with her legacy,” he added. “She was already a hero.”

A long, thoughtful pause. Silence surrounded them, broken only by the occasional howl of the wind. At least, Steve told himself it was the wind. He didn’t want to think about what kind of creatures might howl in a place like Vormir.

“I’m afraid this trade is not for me to make,” Shmidt said finally. “It is for the stone to decide who—if anyone—is returned.”

Steve felt his lips twitch into a wry smile. “Why do I get the feeling it’s a little more involved than just asking nicely?”

“Sacrifice, Captain,” Shmidt replied. “It is the heart of the stone. The reason so few have ever possessed it. The reason, I assume, that no one would ever bring it back. So few are willing to make a true sacrifice for what they think they want.”

His eyes followed Shmidt’s gaze to the jagged edge of the cliff. “So, what are you saying?” he asked skeptically. “I’ve gotta pitch myself off this mountain and hope for the best?”

“Can you think of a more suiting trade? Your life for your friend’s?” he smirked again. “Wasn’t that the very thing you wished for all those years ago?” Another pause as his words sank slowly into Steve. Something that was once a shoulder moved beneath the ragged cloak. “Perhaps there is mercy somewhere in this indifferent universe after all,” he continued. “Perhaps the stone will let you keep your life. Perhaps it will take something else instead.”

Without permission, a flash of the time he’d just spent with Peggy played in his memory. He felt an unfamiliar clench of dread in his stomach. It had been so long since he’d had a reason to tread lightly—since he’d had anything in the back of his mind that wouldn’t go on eventually without him.

But there it was.

He didn’t _want_ to die. Not here. Not when he was so close to going back to her and having everything he’d ever wanted.

_Nat would do it for you,_ that little voice whispered again. _She wouldn’t even think about it._ That voice that sounded hauntingly like Sam, reminding him that there was more at stake than just his own life. Reminding him, the way Sam always did, that he still had a reason and a purpose behind what he was doing.

That he wasn’t done being Captain America yet.

“Either way,” Steve said with a deep, steadying breath. He clutched Mjolnir and his case with the rest of his mission tightly in one hand; he kept the stone in the other and stared at the soft, purple fog beyond the mountain’s edge. “I won’t have to listen to you anymore.”

Before either could say another word, he bolted for the cliff and squeezed his eyes shut when the ground disappeared beneath his feet. The wind rushed in his ears as he fell. His heart hammered with the frantic beat of a man who knew he was going to die. A surge of electricity passed through him—lighting every cell ablaze with a sharp, stinging ache. A clap like thunder. The sound of a soft, familiar voice that could have been—

And then silence.

 

He felt the water before anything else. Soaking into his clothes and hair. Cold and jarring. Pulling him back from the inky, black abyss that had almost swallowed him whole. He coughed, surprised when he opened his eyes and saw the sky above and the outline of the mountain. It seemed so far away. Much farther than he could have jumped. He moved his fingers. His hands were empty. The sky was lighter now—a dusty pink mingled with the violet he’d seen before, making him wonder if a place like this had a dawn and a dusk. And if so, which was approaching now?

A cough from his right slammed into his thoughts, derailing them entirely into stunned disbelief when he sat up and realized that he was not alone.

Natasha sputtered and blinked the world back into focus as she pulled herself up to sitting. Her soaked braid hung over her shoulder when she dropped her head to stare down at herself, her mouth slightly agape in shock before she finally looked up.

Shaking himself from shock, Steve impulsively leaned over and captured her in a tight hug. It was another second before he felt her relax and her arms come up to fold around him. “Steve?” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he said, not willing to let her go yet. Not until he was sure it was really her. That his idiotic scheme had worked, and she was really here. Alive again. Back with him. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“What the hell—”

She pulled away and searched his face for answers. “It’s okay,” he said, breathless with relief. “It’s okay, you’re back. I got you back. You’re okay now.”

Natasha blinked again, more slowly and shook her head. “Clint,” she said suddenly. “He was—”

“He’s fine,” Steve promised, still holding her by the shoulders. “Everyone’s fine. We—”

Her expression changed. It lifted into one he’d almost forgotten. Hope. “Did you do it?” she asked, her voice just above a whisper. “Did you bring them back?”

He gulped down a hard swallow and nodded. “We did,” he said, surprised when she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly again. His hand went to the back of her head and he patted her wet hair. “We won and I got you back,” he repeated. More to cement the reality for himself.

He brought her back. He brought Natasha back from wherever she’d been. She was real and solid and _here_ and soon she’d be home and safe with Sam and Bucky and Clint and Laura. She could rest. She could stop fighting for one moment in her life and—

Her body shuddered with a laugh that stopped his racing thoughts and caused his hear to stutter. Steve’s vision swam. He was so sure he’d never hear that sound again. Natasha pulled away a second time and sat back. “How?”

It was his turn to laugh as he pushed his hair out of his face and shook his head. “Honestly?” he asked, with a glance toward the mountain. “I have no fucking idea. But I want to get out of here before anyone realizes how lucky we just got.”

“Yeah,” she breathed and let him help her to her feet. Her eyes fell to the hammer still on the ground. “Is Thor here too?” Before he could answer, she looked behind him. “Where’s your shield?”

“Oh, it’s,” Steve frowned and hesitated for a second. “It’s broken.” Natasha’s eyebrows shot upward as he continued. “And no, Thor’s not here. I just have to—” he coughed. “I have to return this.”

Her face folded into a thoughtful look so familiar it made him want to hug her again. The corner of her lips twitched into a smirk. “I missed a few things, didn’t I?”

Steve reached down and seized Mjolnir by the handle. It lifted easily for him like it always had. He returned her smirk and shrugged. “Just a few. Clint can fill you in when you get home.”

Her smile faded and her thoughtful frown returned. “Why can’t you fill me in?” she asked. “Where are you going that I’m not?”

“Uh—” his mind blanked for a moment. He hadn’t really thought about this part of the plan. His focus had been on getting Natasha back—all the way back—home safe and sound. He hadn’t considered exactly what would happen for them to get her there. He shook his head, clearing away the confusion. “I’ve gotta return the stones,” he said, remembering that this was _Natasha_ he was speaking to—the only option was to tell her truth. He bent and lifted the case he’d been carrying them in. “Put everything back when and where they belong.”

_And then go back to Peggy,_ he added silently. But he kept his mouth shut for reasons he didn’t want to think about. Natasha deserved the truth—but he didn’t have to tell her the whole truth.

She eyed him carefully. “And then you’re coming back?” she asked, following reluctantly as he started walking toward the shore of the shallow lakebed. “Home? To 2023, right?”

“Yeah,” he said easily. Because he _was_ coming back to 2023. Eventually. “But I have to do this first.” He nodded to her wrist. “Let me set it for you,” he said. “I want to make sure you end up at the right time.”

Still not looking convinced, Nat raised her right arm and studied the GPS watch on her wrist. A deeper line creased her brows. “It’s not…” she shook her arm. Again. A third, harder shake. “It’s not turning on.”

Steve held out his hand as they reached the shore and she slipped off the watch for him to study. He shook it too, ignoring the way she rolled her eyes. Frowning, and with another knot of concern beginning to twist in his stomach, he ran his thumb over the watch’s smooth edges. On his functioning watch, the face lit up automatically as soon as it detected movement. The date and time coordinates were easily programmable and every interaction was instantaneous and seamless as all other Stark tech. Natasha’s watch was nothing but dark, dead, weight in his hand. He gave it one last perfunctory shake. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I don’t know why it would have stopped working.”

“Because _I_ stopped working,” she reminded him quietly. “It must have broken when I hit the ground.”

He swallowed hard. He didn’t want to think about Natasha hitting the ground and everything that had broken when she did. “It’s fine,” he said automatically. “We’ll just…” he reached into the pocket of his suit for his stash of Pym Particles and stopped. His fingers brushed the vials. There had been ten when he’d started. He’d used two of the six Scott had given him to get him to Peggy and then to Vormir. That should have left eight—four to finish the mission, one to send Natasha home, one to go back to Peggy, and two backups.

But when Steve withdrew his hand, there were only six vials. Needlessly he counted them again to be sure. Six.

“We’ll just what, Steve?”

He placed the rest of the particles in his pocket again, keeping two vials out. He handed one to Natasha as he passed her watch back. “The nanotech should still be in there,” he reminded. “Even if the actual GPS function is broken.” He waited while she slipped it back over her wrist. “Give it a try?”

Still looking skeptical, Natasha tapped the center of the watch face. Surprising them both, her full suit appeared over her clothes, helmet included. She popped the visor and blinked. “So, that’s a thing,” she stated.

“We can’t stay here,” he said, doing his best to compartmentalize the worry that had begun to twist deep within. “I have to return the stones and you need to get home.” He studied his own watch. The course was already set for Morag, then Asgard, New Jersey, New York, and _then_ home to 2023. He shook his head and spun the display so that 2023 appeared as their intended destination. “Okay,” he said firmly. “We’ll go back home together, and then I’ll go to Morag on my own.” Taking two vials of particles for this single trip still left him enough to do what he needed to do.

When he looked up, Natasha was looking skeptical, but she nodded slowly and pushed her vial into the compartment of her helmet. “You sure about this, Steve?”

He offered a half smile and shook his head. “Not really,” he admitted before he summoned his own suit and helmet and added his vial of Pym Particles. He held out his hand. “Better hold on tight.”

She nodded and placed her hand in his. The pull of the quantum realm was almost familiar now and Steve was able to brace himself for the way the world swallowed them up with a gulp. He prepared himself for the stabilizing platform to appear beneath their feet, to open his eyes and find his team waiting for him. If he’d had time, he would have smiled to himself, imagining the way their faces would change when they realized he’d brought Natasha with him. If he’d had time, Steve might have decided he was fine with accompanying her back—it would be worth an extra vial of his backup plan to be there with her when she saw everyone for the first time in five years.

But Steve didn’t have time for any of that. Because the ground didn’t materialize beneath his feet. It materialized beneath his back. The weight of Natasha hit him hard in the chest. Her wet braid smacked him in the face as his eyes shot open. He found himself staring at a slate gray sky, stuffed with fat thunderclouds, sparking with lightning.

They sat up together with mild, quiet groans and Natasha untangled her limbs from his quickly. She rubbed her elbow and looked around with a frown. “Well, this isn’t right.”

With a sinking weight of dread in his stomach, Steve took in their surroundings. He logged the spindly alien trees, the ruined temple that had once been gilded and ornate, the croaking of fat, blue and yellow lizards that hopped on their hind legs. He looked at his watch and let out a sigh. “How the hell’d we wind up on Morag?”

His watch had reset itself. It had ignored the destination he’d selected before their jump.

“I thought you told it to take us home,” Natasha said, an edge of anxiety he’d rarely heard creeping into her voice.

Steve looked up from his watch and into the confused expression that he was certain rivaled his own. “I did.”

Before he could figure out what had happened and why, his thoughts were interrupted by a sudden storm of gray dust flying around them. Steve looked up and felt his mouth run dry at the sight of a familiar space craft hovering above them.

Quill’s ship.

Steve grabbed Natasha’s hand again. She was quicker than him and he ended up following her to crouch behind a crumbling statue. With one look, he could tell she knew exactly what was going on.

The watch had taken them to the wrong place.

And, if he wasn’t mistaken, at the wrong time.

 


	3. Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually my least favorite chapter and the one I feel least confident about. Mainly because I didn't want to have to watch Endgame again to make sure I was getting every last detail correct. There are liberties taken, friends, as always. I appreciate your love and graceful forgiveness of said liberties. 
> 
> *kisses*

Chapter Three: Power

 

“This could be worse,” Natasha said seriously as they watched the doors of Quill’s ship slide open. Steve’s eyes shot in her direction. “Very specifically speaking,” she corrected herself. “This is not a worse-case scenario.”

He said nothing at watched as Peter Quill landed hard on the ground. He did a cursory look around before he tapped the edge of his helmet and—to Steve’s disbelief—set a pair of spongey orange headphones over his ears before he pressed a button on the tape player strapped to his belt. Steve knew almost nothing about Peter Quill except that he’d saved the universe from destruction once or twice and was the kind of guy who gave himself a nickname. And was—according to Rocket—an absolute jackass. Nebula had echoed a similar opinion and, as Steve watched him dance his way around his ship, he had to wonder if they weren’t wrong.

“If he’s here,” Steve forced himself back on mission. “Then that means that Nebula and Rhodey are here too, somewhere.”

“Which means we’re early,” Nat stated. “Which is not great—but it’s better than being too late.”

“Right,” Steve agreed tightly.

“So, we’ll just wait,” she said. “Stay hidden.”

He nodded. “As soon as Rhodey and Nebula are gone, we’ll put the orb back in place so Quill can steal it like he’s supposed to.”

“Okay,” she let out a breath and dropped herself down fully onto the ground. Steve followed, trying to make as little noise as possible and rested his back against the courtyard wall. From this vantage point, they had a full view of the temple and anyone coming and going. “And in the meantime,” Nat said after a minute of silence had passed between them, “we can figure out what the hell happened with your watch.”

Not taking his eyes off Quill, Steve unlatched his watch and handed it to her. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I programmed my trip before I left, but now it’s like it won’t let me change destinations all of a sudden.”

From the corner of his eye, he watched her brow furrow and her lips purse as she turned it over in her hands and studied the details on the screen. “And just ignored the last change you made and brought us here instead.” she added. “How is that possible?”

“I have no idea.”

She handed it back to him, still looking troubled. “Hopefully Tony can—” her face fell as she cut herself off. “Shit.”

Steve frowned and looked back. “What?”

“There’s someone else here.”

He craned his neck to follow her gaze and sucked in a breath. She was right. Another ship—much bigger than Quill’s and entirely silent—hovered briefly above the ground before it landed without a sound. The side hatch slid open and three beings disembarked. Steve swallowed hard. All three carried huge guns and only one looked remotely human. He was massive and sporting the kind of biomechanical upgrades that had turned Nebula into a living weapon. The other two, Steve realized with a sinking dread, were Sakaarans. One breed of the mercenaries that had stood on the opposite end of the battlefield, ready to wipe out his planet and everyone on it. Howling and gnashing their horrible teeth in excitement as Thanos gave the order to attack.

“Steve,” Natasha broke his train of thought with a hand on his arm. “What do you want to do?”

He brought himself back to the present and watched the three soldiers do a quick scout of the area before they noticed Quill’s ship. “We have to assume they’re after the orb, too,” he said. “Rhodey didn’t mention anyone else being here.”

“But Quill has to be the one to end up with the stone, right?” she asked and flattened her back further against the wall. “In order for whatever happened in 2014 to not go catastrophically wrong.”

“That’s what Banner said,” Steve replied. “Everything has to go back exactly when it was taken, otherwise—”

“So, what do you say we get rid of these guys,” her green eyes flicked back to the three creeping steadily, guns drawn toward the entrance of the temple. “Then once Rhodey and Nebula are gone, we can leave the stone with Quill and get out of here.”

It was a very simple solution to a problem he hadn’t anticipated. He opened his mouth to tell her it wasn’t the worst plan he’d ever heard when one of those scaly rodents jumped onto the stone directly in his line of sight and let out an ear-splitting squeal. It hopped down a second later, narrowly missing the blue blast from one of the Sakaaran’s guns that shattered the courtyard wall and exposed his and Natasha’s hiding spot.

There was no time to consider another option as soon as the leader of the trio spotted them and called something out in a language Steve couldn’t understand. Grateful that Mjolnir had made the trip, he felt a little more prepared for a fight as he and Natasha approached their sudden opponents. His instincts were still a little backward—still mingling attack and defense as one movement like he’d been able to with his shield—and it was harder than he realized to get used to the hammer as his only weapon.  

Though she’d been surprised by their sudden exposure, Natasha had already been planning an attack. With her quick and graceful slip right back into battle, they were standing over three unconscious bodies in what felt like no time. Steve watched as she kicked their firearms away from them and straightened to her full height with a heavy exhale.

He offered her a wry smile as he bent to grab the arms of one of the Sakaarans to drag him back to his ship. “You miss this?”

She smiled back. “You have no idea.”

“Hey!” A voice from behind them dropped the grins from their faces. Steve turned to see Quill standing in the doorway of the temple. “Who the—”

His question was interrupted by the sound of something heavy smashing into his head. Steve watched his eyes cross before he fell forward and hit the ground with a solid _thump_. He seized Natasha’s hand again and dragged them both behind another crumbling statue.

“Who was he talking to?” Rhodey’s voice sailed across the otherwise empty courtyard and Steve stifled a sigh of relief that they hadn’t been seen.

“I see no one,” Nebula replied. She sounded different. Cooler, if that was possible. Detached. Beside him, Steve watched Natasha’s expression darken in confusion. “Do you have the stone?”

“Yeah…” Rhodey didn’t sound so certain in his response. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Nebula clipped. “I just hate this place. We have what we came for. Let’s go.”

They waited another minute in tense silence before Steve finally raised his head to assess the temple grounds. Four unconscious bodies. No Rhodey. No Nebula. He stood and beckoned Natasha to her feet with a nod. They walked carefully over to Quill where Steve double-checked that his back was still rising and falling with a breath every few seconds before he retrieved the orb from the case and handed it to Natasha to return. He watched, intrigued as she approached empty pedestal and set the carved sphere in the center of it. Instantly, a glowing violet forcefield appeared around it and the orb rose off the pedestal, suspended in midair.

“Only four to go,” he muttered to himself with a shake of his head. They returned to their adversaries and dragged all three bodies slowly back to the base of their ship.

“Steve,” Natasha said suddenly, when they’d walked a safe distance from both ships and the temple. “We need to figure out what happened to your watch before we try another jump.”

He exhaled heavily and nodded. She was right, of course. They couldn’t be jumping through time with a misbehaving watch and a limited supply of particles. He slid the watch off his wrist again and studied it critically. It looked exactly the same as it had when he’d first put it on. The display moved quickly through the course he’d already plotted and, just like on Vormir, he was able to switch the destinations around to make it look like they’d be going back to New York, 2023. “It doesn’t even look like there’s anything broken,” he admitted.

Natasha looked pensive. “Well there’s gotta be something. Tony can—”

“Tony’s dead, Nat,” Steve said, forcing the words out before he could stop himself. When he looked up, her mouth had stayed open a fraction of an inch. “I’m sorry,” he went on quickly as a flush of regret colored his face. “I didn’t want to tell you like—”

“How?” she demanded.

“It was…” he didn’t want to say _the only way_. Because he didn’t know if that was true. “Thanos…” he foundered for a moment. “Thanos came back,” he said finally. “He came back, and he brought every army in the universe with him.” He kept his eyes on her face, not trusting himself to look anywhere else. Anywhere else might make him remember the legions of creatures and monsters he’d faced down. The sight and sounds and smells still invaded his memories at every turn, had poisoned his nightmares and made him long for something as simple as a flashback from the war.

“And Tony…”

He swallowed hard. “Tony took the stones and he…” he shook his head. “He snapped his fingers and—” Steve moved his shoulder. “That’s how we won. He made them all turn to dust. But,” he inhaled steadily again. “The power it took to do it was too much—even with the suit. He couldn’t survive that kind of energy surge.” He studied her expression, waiting for her to say something. “Look, I really didn’t want you to have to find out this way. I’m sorry.”

“He wasn’t there,” she said finally. A small line of concentration formed between her brows. “Tony,” she continued, with a gentle shake of her head. “He wasn’t in the soul realm with me.”

“What was it—”

“I don’t—” Natasha cut him off sharply, making him wish he hadn’t even started to ask. She softened almost immediately. “I just…I don’t want to talk about it right now,” she said softly.

“Of course,” he assured her. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Not never,” she added, making sure he was looking at her when she said it. “Just…not right now.”

Steve nodded. “It’s fine, Nat.”

They were quiet for a moment before she cleared her throat. “So maybe it’s the weight of two people using the same watch,” she said, reminding him that there was a very real problem they’d yet to solve. “They were only designed to be used by one person—so with the two of us,” she shrugged. “If we’re both using yours, it would make sense for it to be buggy.”

Steve frowned, considering this. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “That makes sense.”

“Doesn’t help us figure out how to get home any faster other than going through all of your stops together,” she continued as her head slightly to one side.

“We don’t have enough particles for that,” he said, a very real and metallic taste of dread settling in the back of his throat.

“How many jumps can we make with what we have?”

“Together?” he asked. “Two. If we get you home, then I can finish on my own. But if we can’t—”

“Then we’re one jump short,” she finished for him.

They shared a heavy sigh and another long moment of contemplation before a groan from the trio of soldiers they’d subdued earlier shook Steve out of his thoughts. “We can’t stay here,” he repeated his assertion from before. “Let’s just try again and hope for the best.”

“Where are we going if we _don’t_ go home?’ she asked cautiously while they each dropped another vial of particles into their helmets to power the jump.

“Asgard,” he said briefly. “2013.”

Natasha’s eyes fell to Mjolnir as Steve picked it up with ease. “Thor’ll be happy to see that again.”

“Well,” Steve held out his hand to her. “If we do it right, he won’t even know it was ever missing.”

She placed her hand in his and watched him program in the coordinates for taking them back to New York, 2023. She raised her eyes to his and offered a half-smile. “Second time’s the charm?”

He smiled back. “Hope so,” he said honestly and shut his eyes against the pull of dropping into the quantum realm again.

His smile was knocked off his face the same time the air was knocked out of his lungs. Again, he’d landed hard on his back; this time Nat had fallen beside him, still clutching his hand. A cool, granite floor had caught them both—stranding them in an empty, ornate hall that Steve had to imagine was reserved for special occasions.

Special, royal, Asgardian occasions.

They clambered to their feet together and looked around, neither needing to say what they were thinking. An explosion outside drew them to the nearest window and Steve’s heart sank a second time. An alien ship had just crashed into the other side of the palace and descending from its doors were the pale, grotesque Dark Elves he’d heard Thor describe.

The GPS watch had ignored their request a second time.

And this time, it had made them late.


	4. Reality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell you sweet beans how much your support is making my life right now. I was SO NERVOUS to jump into this, and you're all just making it such a joy. I love you. That's all.

_Reality_

 

 

Asgard, Steve would always remember later, was when things really started to go wrong.

Sure, they’d been going relatively wrong before he and Natasha had landed there, in the midst of an invasion by power-hungry, evil elves, previously thought to be extinct. Unreliable time-travel accessories, dwindling supply of Pym Particles, no tech-support to speak of, no real plan beyond crossing fingers and hoping for the best. It already wasn’t a great mission.

And one could argue that, given all that, it might be difficult to pinpoint exactly when things went from _relatively_ wrong to _really, really_ wrong.

It wasn’t.

It was abundantly clear to Steve precisely when it was time to slap a FUBAR sticker on this entire operation.

The reality stone wanted out the moment Steve opened the case. He could feel it pulsing and vibrating in its containment as he pulled it free and held it out to Natasha. It was the only one of the stones that felt alive—a true, sentient power that was making him do what it wanted by freeing it from its housing. He could tell she felt it too as she closed her hand around it. “You get this back to Jane,” he said, having to tear his eyes away from the way the red substance swirled with excitement. He was glad she didn’t ask how she was supposed to find Jane because honestly, Steve had no idea. “I’ll put this somewhere Thor can find it.” No clue where that might be either. “Meet back here as soon as possible.”

Natasha nodded and left without a word.

His thoughts were almost too loud to focus in the relative silence that surrounded him once he was left alone. The sounds from outside—the panic, the shouting, the blasts of alien gunfire and crumbling rock—did nothing but amplify the din of worst-case scenarios that were steadily building in his head.

He had two vials of Pym Particles left. Two. Out of the ten he’d had originally. And he wasn’t even halfway done with his mission. If they couldn’t figure something out soon—

Steve stopped and his shoulders dropped as a realization struck him. The next stop on his watch was Camp Lehigh in 1970. The breath left his lungs in a sigh of relief. There were more particles there. He’d stolen some once, he could steal them again. Pym would just make more, and it would all wash out in the end. Even if the watch kept malfunctioning, he could take enough to make sure he and Nat could both get where they needed to go without fear of getting stuck somewhere along the way.

As if on cue—a sign from the universe that everything was going to work out after all—Mjolnir flew from his hand. He let it go on instinct, barely realizing what was happening before it was gone, zipping out the open window in the outstretched and waiting hand of Thor. Steve watched his friend catch it easily, mid-fall from a jump from a balcony and take off in the direction of the heart of the skirmish.

He didn’t know how long Natasha might take to return the aether to Jane and, with nothing else to do until she did, Steve wondered if he should try to help the Asgardians. They’d made a promise they wouldn’t—back a million years ago when the idea of the time heist was still in its infancy—a promise not to get involved or change anything if they could help it. But as Steve watched a group of civilians—most of them looking like teenagers—scurry from the nearest building, he decided to forget that promise.

They’d already arrived late, he reminded himself.  That in and of itself had taken the idea of not-making-waves off the table. And what kind of person would he be if he could stand here and watch innocent people get slaughtered?

Mind made up, and not caring if anyone noticed him, Steve left the same way Natasha had and took the stairs down to the fighting. He’d only just reached the bottom and pulled open the heavy front door, meaning to usher the first group he saw inside when he realized something was wrong.

The door he’d opened should have led him outside. He should be close to the central courtyard that he’d been looking down on from the top of the stairs.

But.

Steve had opened the door and found himself in a hallway. A long, empty hallway lit with moonlight from its windows and—by what he could hear—much further away from the fighting than he’d meant to be. In fact, he tilted his head to one side and listened. It didn’t sound like there was any fighting anymore. He spun around, expecting to see the stone steps he’d just descended. Instead, the hallway continued on behind him, as if he’d just materialized in the center.

He stared down the corridor, mind reeling, trying to figure out how he’d managed this. A breeze fluttered in through the gossamer curtains casting a sheer shadow over the beam of moonlight that fell across his feet.

Steve’s brain stuttered to a halt as he stared at his feet. Moonlight. He raised his eyes again and looked directly at the full, silver moon hanging low over the trees. Definitely moonlight.

It had been mid-morning when he and Natasha had arrived.

Cautiously, he approached the nearest window and looked out. He could see the window where he’d just been. They’d been in one of the palace’s adjoining towers, only about halfway up. There was no sign of the Dark Elves or their ships; no trace of the chaos he’d just tried to join. There was a deep and peaceful calm over the palace and grounds. He took a moment to orient himself. From this vantage point he could tell he was on the opposite side of the courtyard, on the ground level. As for how he’d crossed 500 yards in less than a second—

He turned from the window and crashed headlong into Natasha. She seized his arms and held on tightly. “Oh, thank God,” she exclaimed.

“How did you get here?” he asked, gripping her back. “What the hell is going on?”

She looked confused. “What do you mean how did I get here? I walked. How did _you_ get here?”

“I—wait, why did you say thank God?”

“Because it was the middle of the day thirty seconds ago and now it’s the middle of the night! I didn’t know if something happened to you.”

They let each other go, both breathing hard. “Okay, so that happened to you, too,” Steve said, feeling only about one percent better that he wasn’t just crazy.

“How did you get here?” she asked again.

“I have no idea,” he admitted. “I was walking down the stairs one minute and then the next I was in the middle of this hallway. Where did you come from?”

“From where they were keeping Jane,” she said with a glance over her shoulder to one of the closed doors along the other wall. “I was going to wait for her to come back and get the jump, but then all of a sudden, it was the middle of the night and she was asleep in her bed.”

Steve noted Natasha’s eyes, the slight edge in her voice. “So that’s done at least,” he said, forcing himself to find something positive.

She nodded. “And Mjolnir’s back with Thor?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. I don’t know what’s going on, but I think we need to get the hell out of here.”

A sound interrupted his agreement and snapped their attention to the north end of hallway. Someone was coming; judging by the rise and fall of voices, more than just one someone.

They moved quickly and like a single unit to the nearest doorway. Natasha opened it silently and Steve followed her inside, expecting to find a bedroom or an office or even an Asgardian cleaning supply cabinet.

He was expecting anything, really, except to have been transported to the middle of another battle. Daylight again. Although this time it was gray and dreary. And this time he could tell right away that they were on Earth. London, specifically, judging by the skyline before them—interrupted though it was by the presence of an enormous spike of a spaceship parked in the middle of Greenwich.

“Holy shit.”

Steve whirled around so fast he almost snapped his neck at the sound of another woman’s voice. He and Natasha turned all the way back to find they’d been transported directly in the line of sight of a civilian.

She looked to be in her mid-twenties with dark, curly hair and a mouth that was hanging open. “You guys just _appeared_ ,” she stated. Steve noticed a cellphone clutched in her hand. “Like, out of thin air.”

He and Natasha exchanged a look. “What year is it?” Nat asked before he could think of anything to say.

“Uh—2013?” she looked between the two of them and narrowed her eyes. “What…year is it where you guys are from?”

Steve glanced down, realizing their nanotech suits were still engaged. He opened his mouth to try to explain when her large eyes doubled in size. “Hang on,” she said, pointing to Natasha. “I know you. You’re Avengers.” Steve fought the urge to sigh. They didn’t have time for this. “Did Thor call you for backup?”

He blinked. “Thor?” he asked. “You know Thor?”

“Yeah, we’re bros,” she said with a shrug. “He’s kicking Dark Elf ass around here somewhere,” she glanced over her shoulder. “I think if you just follow the sci-fi battle noises, you’ll find him.” She shook her head and looked down at her watch and the phone in her hand. “Anyway—the world’s kind of about to end in like, four and a half minutes? So, if you’re gonna do something about it, I’d go now. I’ve gotta science some stuff to try to stop it from happening.”

“We’re not supposed to be here,” he said finally. “We don’t even know how we got here.”

She stopped from where she was about to take off and gave them both a puzzled look. “Well, if we live through the next five minutes, I’m sure someone can help you with that. In the meantime,” she looked at her watch. “Three minutes and forty-eight seconds so—” she pulled the phone up to her face and spoke into it like a radio. “Jane—your last spike is in place. I can’t find Ian and I think Thor called his friends.”

“Jane?” Natasha repeated. “Jane Foster?”

“How did you _lose_ Ian?” another female voice crackled through on speakerphone. “He’s _your_ intern.”

“Are you seriously spending what might be our last minutes on Earth yelling at me?” the woman in front of them asked. “And I was going to go _get_ Ian but I got interrupted by…” she frowned and looked at the two of them again. “Time traveling superheroes?” she shook her head. “Anyway, turn your thing on—stuff’s getting weird.” She lowered the phone and nodded. “Yeah, Jane Foster—she’s my boss. Kind of,” she frowned again. “I mean, she doesn’t pay me so—”

“We have to go,” Steve said firmly.

Natasha grabbed the case of infinity stones and nodded. “Don’t tell anyone about this,” she said to their witness. “If Jane asks what you meant just now, tell her she misunderstood you. Make something up.”

Distracted by checking her watch again, she nodded. “Sure, whatever. I gotta—”

Steve didn’t hear what she had to do. All sound he’d been registering was taken over by a clear, crystalline ringing in his ears. Alarmed, he looked at Natasha, wondering if she heard it too.

And that moment—the last look they shared before the ground opened beneath them in a ring of golden light—was the last time Steve had hope that any part of this mission might turn out okay. Up until that point, he’d been forcing himself to be optimistic.

Sure, his watch wasn’t working quite right and they weren’t exactly sticking their landings—but they were still getting where they needed to go.

And sure, they were almost out of Pym Particles for reasons he didn’t understand—but they were just about to jump back to the only place in his timeline where acquiring more wouldn’t be a problem.

And sure, time and space had shifted and rearranged itself while they were on Asgard with no discernable reason. But they weren’t on Asgard anymore and both the aether and Mjolnir were back where they belonged.

But there was no way he could be optimistic when he hit the ground—at the very least, still on his feet this time—and assessed their new surroundings. A dark room, full of strange objects and antiquities beneath glass cases. Above his head the sparking, ringing circle of crackling magic vanished with a soft _whoosh,_ leaving them in a hushed and heavy silence.

“What the _hell_ was that!?”

Almost silence. About three seconds of silence.

Steve turned back, surprised to find that he and Natasha had not been transported to this dark museum alone. The young woman—the one who knew Thor—had come with them. She was still a few feet away, still clutching her phone, the fingers on her other hand spread wide like she was trying to steady herself.

“ _That_ was travel through an interdimensional gateway,” a calm, measured voice drew all their attention to the center of the room. A tall figure glided down a polished staircase, wrapped in flowing, yellow robes. Large eyes, pale skin, and a head so completely bald it actually shone in the light filtering through the stained-glass windows. It wasn’t until they were almost eye to eye that Steve realized she was a woman. Her expression changed from passively pleasant as she looked at Steve and Natasha, to folded in confusion when her eyes landed on the third person in their party. “But you shouldn’t have experienced it.”

She blinked and pointed at herself. “Me?” she repeated. “No shit I shouldn’t have experienced it— _nobody_ should experience that. I just got sucked through a hole in the—”

“Catch her,” the bald woman said abruptly to Steve.

“Catch—” he started to repeat in confusion before the woman to his right dropped her phone and pitched forward with a sudden loss of consciousness. He moved just in time to intercept her before she hit the floor. With some difficulty, he wrangled her into his arms, and stared expectantly at the person who’d just given the order. “I don’t know who you are,” he stated tiredly. “But please tell me you know what’s going on?”

“Only parts,” she answered vaguely. “I know that _you_ are Steven Rogers and I’ve brought you here because you have something that belongs to me,” her serene smile dropped when she looked at Natasha and the unconscious woman in their care. “But as for everything else, I’m afraid it’s slightly more complicated.”

And that was it. That was the moment Steve knew, in his heart, that they were totally fucked.

 


	5. Time and Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooof. This was officially my hardest chapter to write (though not my least favorite--that one still belongs to the events on Morag). It was really hard and it took a lot out of me. There are a few things I like though and that I'm proud of. I hope you like them too.
> 
> Also, I hope you all take a deeeeeeeep breath and get ready for some SERIOUS MJ MAKES STUFF UP ABOUT TIME TRAVEL. Because that's mostly what happens here.

Four wall that were mostly just overstuffed bookshelves surrounded a small desk and a cot where Steve was able to lay their unconscious stowaway. It wasn’t until he’d set her all the way down that he noticed the faint trickle of blood from one of her ears and beneath her nose. He frowned. “Is she…going to be okay?”

The woman who’d greeted them gently removed the red knit cap covering the younger woman’s head and carefully ran long fingers through her dark curls. He was surprised by the tenderness behind her actions. “I certainly hope so,” she said, looking up. “Please give me a minute to see what I can find out.”

Natasha was waiting, a pillar of tension, on the other side of the upper floor. Her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth. “I don’t like any of this,” she stated when he was close enough to hear.

“Neither do I,” he admitted, with a glance over his shoulder. “I don’t know what’s going on and I can’t imagine any of it’s going to be better now that we have a civilian to take care of.”

“Assuming whatever just happened doesn’t kill her,” Nat commented. “She didn’t look so good,” she said, a little less harsh.

“That’s because she’s _not_ so good.” They turned around to watch their host pull a curtain across the doorway to the tiny office. “Her name is Darcy Lewis, she’s a twenty-four-year-old graduate student from Philadelphia and given that she’s working for Drs Selvig and Foster, I think it’s safe to assume she’s studying next year’s Convergence.”

Steve blinked. “Did you read her aura to learn all that?”

Another pacific smile. “She had a wallet in her coat pocket, Captain,” she said simply. “Driver’s license and a student ID with clearances to Culver University’s astrophysics labs. I thought I’d start there before getting the mystic arts involved.”

Despite everything that transpired in the last few hours, Steve caught the way Natasha pursed her lips together to smother back a smile at his expense. With the tips of his ears slightly pink, Steve cleared his throat. “So, what’s wrong with her?” he asked. “And where the hell are we? And who are you? And what’s going on?”

“Please,” she held out an open palm. “Sit.”

At her command, Steve and Natasha found themselves shoved down into two squashy armchairs, across from her, a kettle and three cups with saucers set on a table between them. Natasha squeezed her eyes shut and gently pressed her fingertips to her temple. “Can you stop doing that, please?” she asked quietly. “I’m starting to get dizzy.”

“I would imagine so,” their host said as she bent and poured three cups of tea. “You’ve had quite a day.” She said nothing more until she was seated herself and stirring a cube of sugar into her cup. “Now, I believe you demanded an introduction,” she said, still unnervingly pleasant and measured. “I am the Sorcerer Supreme, defender of the Earth and leader of the Masters of Mystic Arts. My followers call me The Ancient One, but you can feel free to call me whatever you’d like. Please,” she added, with a gesture toward the table. “Drink. You’ll feel better.”

Hesitantly, and with a loaded look exchanged, both Steve and Natasha reached for their tea.

“Which answers one of your questions,” she continued, as if she’d just introduced herself as Susan from Accounting. “The next being where you are—although given the time you’ve had, I would have thought you’d know well enough by now to also ask _when_ you are. You’re in the New York Sanctum—one of the three bases of the Masters of the Mystic Arts—which is of course, in New York City. And as for when, it’s May 4, 2012.”

Steve set his cup down. “You’re the one who gave Banner the Time Stone.”

“Along with a very specific set of guidelines which,” she shook her head. “I must say, have _not_ been followed.”

“Something went wrong back on Vormir with the—"

“I think it’s my fault,” Natasha blurted out, cutting him off.

Steve’s eyes shot over to her. “What? How?”

“It’s not,” the Ancient One said calmly. “It’s true that he shouldn’t have been able to bring you back from the Soul Realm,” she said, seemingly unaware of how her words made Steve’s stomach twist. “But neither should you have been there in the first place—any action that restores balance doesn’t make ripples like this.” She frowned thoughtfully.

“What do you mean she shouldn’t have been there in the first place?” Steve asked.

“Just that,” she said. “It was well ahead of her time—there is so much more she has to do.” Before either of them could comment on this, she continued. “But Miss Romanoff’s presence is not what concerns me. She was expected. As were you.” Her unearthly green eyes slid back to the tiny room behind them and the curtain she’d just closed. “ _She_ , on the other hand, was not.”

“What does that mean?”

“For the time being,” The Ancient One said carefully, “it means your friend is very sick.”

“She’s not our friend,” Steve said brusquely, before he could stop himself. “We don’t even know her.” He caught the way Natasha’s eyebrows lifted at the edge in his voice. It sounded callous, but the truth was that regardless of who she was or which of his team members she knew, he didn’t have time to worry about Darcy Lewis. Her presence had thoroughly screwed up an already doomed mission and with each minute they wasted—including those they were wasting right now—his chance at salvaging any part of it felt like it was slipping further and further away.

“Well, that will certainly remain the case if she doesn’t survive the next few days.”

Natasha’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Is that a possibility?”

“It is,” they were told. “And given the way you two have been skipping around—I’m surprised you’re both not suffering the same effects that she is.”

Steve exchanged another look with Natasha. “What kind of effects?”

“You don’t seem to want to be concerned with the specifics,” the Ancient One reminded in an almost breezy tone as she held out her hand. “Please give me the Time Stone back before you do any further damage.”

He blinked. “Further damage?”

“Yes,” she said patiently. “Every jump you’ve made since Vormir has landed wrong. You’ve created small, but noticeable ripples that I can’t repair without my stone.”

“We didn’t—” he felt indignant for a moment as Nat reached down and retrieved the case. She set it on the table and popped the clasp. Without waiting for an invitation, their host leaned over and plucked the green gem from its housing. She set it safely back into the heavy amulet around her neck. “How are you going to repair them?”

“The same way I brought you three here,” she informed him. “To the correct and specific time so that you can return the Mind Stone without creating a paradox.” She blinked. “Mystically.”

Unsettled by the way this woman spoke and the implications she was making, Steve cleared his throat. “And is she—” he glanced back to the tiny room in the corner.

“Darcy,” the Ancient One corrected.

“Darcy,” he repeated, trying to hide his irritation. “Are you going to be able to fix her mystically too?”

“I’m not sure,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll have to first determine what caused the reaction she’s having and if there’s anything that can be done for it,” she lifted what would have been eyebrows if she had any. “And I can’t do that while I’m maintaining the pocket universe I’ve constructed to make sure the mind stone is returned safely and without impediment. So please,” she nodded to the case. “Take care of that as quickly as possible.”

“Pocket universe?” Steve was grateful it was Natasha who had asked—his own head was starting to hurt from everything he wasn’t understanding.

The Ancient One nodded. “I extracted the moment to which you needed to return and suspended it from reality,” she said as if this was the most normal thing in the world. “Once the stone is back in place, time will resume as normal and I’ll have more energy to devote to determining how badly Miss Lewis is suffering.”

Natasha looked at the yellow crystal glowing in the case and then back to Steve. “You should go,” she said firmly. “The faster we get rid of these stones, the better.”

He had to agree. “What about you?”

She glanced back at the Sorcerer Supreme. “I’ll stay and learn what I can about our problem,” she said with a shrug.

Steve nodded and snapped closed the case. “I guess I’ll be right back.”

He wasn’t _right_ back. But close enough. He didn’t know what he was expecting to find when he stepped outside the Sanctum, but the Ancient One had frozen time. Literally.

It was like she’d hit the pause button—all the chaos and confusion, the explosions and the destruction that Loki and the Chitauri had wrought over New York that day were suspended. People frozen as they sprinted from the danger, debris stuck in the sky instead of raining down, detonations paused in puffy clouds of fire and smoke that didn’t dissipate as he jogged through.

He didn’t know how long he was gone, but the moment he returned and closed the Sanctum’s front door, he heard a cacophony erupt behind him. Confused, he looked through the window and found that the spell had been broken. The war zone had resumed, and it only took one look at the melee for him to reach for the door again, intent on going back out to help.

But he didn’t make it that far. As soon as his hand touched the doorknob, Steve found himself back upstairs, staring at the empty chairs where they’d been sitting before. He swayed in place and grabbed hold of the back of one of the chairs to steady himself. “A little warning would be nice,” he muttered before the rise and fall of voices from the small corner room gave him pause.

“It’s actually a blessing that you were pulled backward in time,” the Ancient One said, sounding much kinder and more patient than she had when she’d spoken to him earlier. “It’s much less damaging.”

“So, um,” that was Darcy speaking now and flash of relief he felt that she’d woken up surprised him. “Exactly how damaged _am_ I?”

A pause that felt just a little too long before the Ancient One spoke again. “Are you feeling like you might be able to sit up?” she asked. “This is something we should all discuss together and there’s more space in the parlor.”

Natasha was out of the room first. She gave him a brief smile and an appraising look. “Everything go okay?”

He nodded. “Anything happen here while I was gone?”

“Darcy woke up,” Nat said, and Steve caught her grim look. “She’s in rough shape.”

He didn’t groan, but he almost wanted to. Of all the things they didn’t have time for, this had to top the list. “She brought all of us here,” he said, keeping his voice low with a nod in the direction of the back room. “Why can’t she just send her home?”

Natasha’s shoulder moved. “She said it’s not that simple.”

“That’s correct, Miss Romanoff,” the Ancient One said, almost cheerfully as she and Darcy made their way to the nearest armchair. Natasha sat in the other and Steve remained standing while their host took the remaining chair. Before his eyes, the cups on the table refilled with fresh, steaming tea.

Darcy’s eyes widened. “That’s some Dumbledore shit, right there,” she muttered and reached for a cup.

The Ancient One appeared to be suppressing a smile as she offered Steve another cup. He didn’t feel like he had a choice but to accept it. At the very least, he thought, it warmed his hands. “Now,” she said, turning back to Darcy. “What can you tell us about the Convergence?”

Darcy’s lips puckered sourly. “I know it’s seriously messing with my plans to go home for Thanksgiving,” she said and shook her head. “Um, let’s see. Something like every five thousand years, all the realms align? And the closer it gets to peak…” her hand moved vaguely, “whatever, the crazier everything gets.”

“What do you mean ‘crazier’?” Steve asked.

“Gravitational anomalies are the big one. That’s what brought us to London in the first place. Erik called and said that gravity was misbehaving—”

“Misbehaving,” he repeated. There was that word again. He was starting to get sick of it.

Darcy shrugged. “That’s how he put it—and he was right. Jane and I watched a bunch of ten-year-olds pick up and twirl a station wagon before she got all juiced.” She gave him a quick once over before she offered a tight smile. “Thanks, by the way,” she added. “I assume you’re the one who carried me up here?”

He nodded. “No problem.”

“And also thanks,” she continued without missing a beat, “for immediately dismissing my existence because we’re not best pals.”

He dropped his gaze and felt a brief rush of regret for his earlier words and the indifference behind them. “I’m sorry,” he said, honestly. “I didn’t mean—”

“For me to hear it,” she finished flatly. “I’m sure. So,” she looked back to the Ancient One. “Anyway,  gravitational anomalies, temporal shifts…” she trailed off. “Uh, birds appearing in big giant packs and flying up out of the middle of the sidewalk? Whole bunch of weird stuff that we were trying to stop before I got,” she frowned, “y’know, accidentally kidnapped by you and your grouchy time-traveling friends.”

Steve didn’t bother objecting to her description as Natasha’s brow furrowed. “You said this Convergence thing was affecting all of the nine realms?” Darcy nodded and Nat raised her eyes to his. “That might explain what happened to us on Asgard.”

“What happened on Asgard?” Darcy asked, glancing between them.

“It switched from the middle of the day to the night before in a second,” Natasha said. “And Steve went to walk outside, and he ended up in an entirely different building.”

“And that’s how we wound up in London,” Steve chimed in. “We thought we were going into a different room.”

Darcy nodded slowly. He could tell it was hurting her to move her head too quickly. “I’m no expert, but that sounds a lot like what was going on down here.”

The Ancient One nodded. “It’s very likely you were experiencing the same thing.” Her mouth folded into a hard line. “And I’m afraid your proximity to it,” she turned back to Darcy, “is the reason you’re so sick now. A single jump in a timeline shouldn’t cause this kind of reaction,” she went on, motioning to the bloodied handkerchief that Darcy was using to occasionally swipe at her nose and beneath her ears. “But someone with prolonged exposure to cosmic forces…” her frown deepened. “Well, it’s not unlike radiation, that way.”

She inhaled sharply and shook her head. “Man, the hits just keep on rolling, don’t they?” She looked from Nat to Steve and then back to the Ancient One. “Okay, but they were exposed to the Convergence too—and didn’t you say they’d been skipping around time all day? How come they’re not sick?”

“They were protected by their method of travel,” the Ancient One said. “Time travel is exceptionally dangerous on a molecular level. It’s why we build things like time machines and quantum stabilizing tunnels,” she nodded toward Natasha’s nanotech suit. “Why we were protective layers and why I’ve spent decades mastering use of the sling ring. And even with those precautions in place, there are always risks.”

“Why is going to the past less risky than the future?” Natasha asked, toying with the edge of her braid.

“The past is firm. It’s solid. It’s already been shaped and had time to harden.” She set her own teacup down. “When you go to the future, you’re exposing yourself to infinite possibility. Your body has to choose one—or one has to be chosen for you—in order for you to stabilize, but the reality of making that choice…” she frowned thoughtfully before she chose her words, “can be quite unpleasant.”

“But she wouldn’t be going to the _future_ future,” Natasha argued lightly. “She’d just be going back to her own timeline.”

“Yes, but it’s a jump forward from _this_ moment,” the Ancient One reminded. “And given her current state, any move forward is risking her life.”

They were quiet for a long moment, those words hanging over them, thick and heavy before Darcy spoke again. “So, what’s going to happen to me?” Her voice had lost its humor and she suddenly looked very small in that armchair; all wide blue eyes and downturned lips. Steve was stuck with a twist in his chest by the realization of how _young_ she seemed. The Ancient One had said she was twenty-four. The same age he was when he’d joined the Army. Just as scared. Trying just as hard to hide it.

“You’re going to need time to recover,” the Ancient told her, placing a hand on her arm. “And even then, I’m afraid it’s going to get a bit worse before it gets better.”

Steve watched her force a smile that didn’t show her teeth. “Fun.”

“If you’re going to return to your correct time, you can’t do it unprotected,” the older woman said firmly. “Another jump—forward or back—at this point without some stabilizing element will kill you.” The Ancient One raised her eyes again to Steve. “As for the two of you—you’re not finished with your task yet.”

“No,” he said, grateful to have the topic turned back to something he was at least moderately familiar with. “We have to return the Tesseract to Camp Lehigh in New Jersey, 1970.”

“1970?”

He nodded and she looked thoughtful. “That _would_ be far enough,” she mused quietly before she cleared her throat. “How were you planning to get there?”

“Same as before,” Natasha spoke for them both. “Through the quantum realm.”

“That can’t be a real thing,” Darcy broke in.

“It’s a real thing,” Steve assured her, flatly. “It’s how we’ve been managing time travel thus far.”

She frowned. “Haven’t you been kind of sucking at it, though?”

“Only recently,” Natasha admitted, before Steve could feel indignant. “The first time we did it, it went off without a hitch—” her lips tugged downward. “I think.”

“It did,” Steve said quickly, not wanting to let her think about the fact that she’d missed celebrating their success. He looked back to the Ancient One. “Can you tell us what’s going to happen if we try to use the GPS bracelet again?”

“Not with any certainty,” she said. “As far as I can tell, you shouldn’t have had any of the problems that you’ve had.” She pursed her lips. “In fact, there’s really only one possible explanation as to why any of this should have started after your time on Vormir.” That unnerving stare focused just a little too long on him and Steve fought a strong urge to fidget or look away.

“What?” Natasha asked, looking between them.

“And far enough for what?” Darcy broke in.

The Ancient One blinked. “For you to recover,” she said, answering Darcy’s question over Natasha’s to Steve’s entangled relief and dismay.

He didn’t want to think about the accusation behind her gaze. The truth he’d been trying to ignore since he’d leapt from that cliff.

“Recover?” Darcy repeated, interrupting his train of thought. “Wh-what do you mean? Aren’t I going to recover here?”

“I wish I could let you,” the sorcerer said, sounding genuinely sorry. “But you’re much too close to your actual timeline here and allowing you to stay could create a paradox with the potential to shred the fabric of reality.”

“For fuck’s sake—"

“So, you’re telling us,” Natasha broke in, cutting Darcy off as she tossed up her hands, “that sick as she is, you want her to come to 1970 _with_ us?”

“Absolutely not,” Steve said firmly. “This isn’t a taxi service,” he reminded when they all looked back up at him again. “You’ve been saying since we got here that we’re breaking too many rules and creating too many ripples—how is bringing _another_ person to our last jump going to make any of that any better?”

With the mild irritation of a woman who wasn’t used to being questioned, the Ancient One set her jaw and reached for the amulet around her neck. She removed the Time Stone from within its central chamber and set it on the table.

“That’s pretty,” Darcy commented lightly, making their host smile.

“It’s more than that,” she said, waving one of her waxen pale hands over it to produce a golden projection of a sphere that crackled with energy the same as the portal she’d created that brought them there. “This stone allows me to extract and examine specific timelines, manipulate the fabric of reality, and explore infinite possible outcomes of any situation.” She looked up at Darcy. “It’s how _I_ see the future without the damage of physically going there.” A pause before she smiled again. “And it really is very pretty,” she added before she seized the sphere she’d conjured and sank her fingers into it, stretching it apart like a ball of dough.

“These,” she said as three solid lines, thick golden threads of electricity, appeared between her fingers, “are your timelines.” Steve caught the way Natasha’s eyebrows shot up as the Ancient One continued. She held them between her fingers and tapped them each from top to bottom with her thumb. “Captain Rogers, Miss Romanoff, and Miss Lewis, down here.” She wiggled the fingers on her right hand. “This over here is our present moment and this,” she moved her hands and made the strands bounce before they started to shift, fusing together in some parts, splintering away from one another in others, “is a map of all the times your lines have intersected.” As expected, his and Natasha’s mingled consistently through the last part of their respective lines, but the only time the three cords met was at the very end, here in the present.

“Now if I stretch these lines,” she moved her hands again. “I can examine possible futures and help to determine possible outcomes.” A flood of new golden threads spilled from between her hands and hovered above and around them, arranging themselves in sets of three with different lengths and different connections. “But what I see consistently,” as if by her command, the bottom cord of each set of three lines flickered and faded with the exception of one. This one line remained glowing, fused by a bead of bright light with the other two in its set, “is that unless Darcy _does_ return to 1970 with the two of you, she doesn’t live much past her time here.”

The other lines faded but for that one set of lines that drifted down to settle between the Ancient One’s hands. She pressed her palms together and the cords folded in on themselves until they were once again a compact ball of energy that disappeared into the glowing emerald gem before it was placed back in its amulet and hung around the sorcerer’s neck.

It was Darcy who finally broke the silence. “Have I mentioned that I’m just like,” she blew a sigh through her lips and shook her head. “Just _so_ glad that I met you guys. This has been a _really_ great experience all around.”

“If there were another way, I’d happily offer it to you,” the Ancient One said quickly. “And yes, making another jump is going to be very hard on your system, so we’ll need to take protective measures before you do.”

Natasha wet her lips and glanced between Steve and the Ancient One. “We’ve been using Pym Particles to access the quantum realm when we’ve been making our jumps. If Darcy comes back to 1970 with us, we can get enough to take us all back to 2023, then get her to 2013 with her own GPS bracelet.”

His heart sank as she voiced this idea. With as much as his head was hurting, he didn’t want to entertain the idea of _more_ jumps. More headaches. More opportunities for things to go wrong.

More time stolen that he could be spending with Peggy.

He shook the thought from his head and forced himself to reset. There would be time, he reminded himself. There would be time for everything. They’d finish this mission, he’d get Natasha home and Darcy back where she belonged, and then he’d go home too. The longer he’d had to think about it, the more that going back to Peggy felt like everything he’d ever wanted.

Right there. Almost close enough to touch.

“Would that be safe?” Darcy asked, a little line of concern folded between her eyebrows. “Won’t I be…” she frowned. “I don’t know, running the risk of my little string getting tangled up in a big ball of timey-wimey stuff?”

“Rest here tonight,” the Ancient One said kindly. “And again, after you’ve made the next jump, but as long as you’re using the quantum technology and the GPS bracelet functions as its supposed to, I think you’ll be able to recover in your own time without too many lingering effects.”

Darcy pursed her lips. “I know you’re trying to be nice and make me feel better,” she said after a moment. “But I _really_ hated the way you said that.”

He cleared his throat. “If that’s what we have to do, then that’s what we have to do,” he said, uncrossing the arms he’d folded over his chest. “But we still don’t know what’s going on with this GPS bracelet,” he reminded them. “How do we know it’s going to take us where we need to go two more times?”

The Ancient One stood from her seat and nodded. “You can’t know,” she said simply. “Which is why I’m going to send you where you’re meant to go with the Time Stone. I don’t want there to be any missteps. And if your bracelet has only one more stop programmed from the original itinerary you gave it, then it seems like it would have no choice but to go to the correct location.”

“Plus,” Nat added with a look back at him. “2012, 1970, and 2023 are the only places your watch has _definitely_ worked for you before.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “But if nothing else, I’m taking a little bit of comfort in knowing that we at least know it knows how to get us to those three places because it’s done it before.”

He felt Darcy’s eyes shoot between them before she pursed her lips. “I can’t be the only one feeling not great about this plan.”

“You’re not,” he said before he could stop himself. “But a risky plan is better than no plan and that’s what we were looking at before.”

“He’s right,” the Ancient One agreed. “But for now, we should all get some rest. It’s very late.”

Surprised, Steve looked toward the window and saw that she was right. Sometime since he’d returned, night had fallen and the lights from the city twinkled through the stained-glass windows. He could still hear sirens and the sounds of a city that was now defining itself as post-near-apocalyptic. He thought about how the Ancient One had shot him back upstairs when he’d tried to go and help the first time. Idly, he walked toward one of the windows, wondering if she’d do it again.

“You have a flair for paradox, Captain,” she said, suddenly standing right beside him. Behind her, he saw that Darcy had been returned to the little cot she’d been using before and two sofas had been summoned with a pillow and blanket on each. “I apologize for rerouting you so abruptly earlier,” she continued, making him certain she could read his mind. “But I couldn’t risk you creating any further ripples.”

Steve frowned and looked down at the street below them. It wasn’t too bad now; cleaning crews were working to restore the walkability of the sidewalks and it didn’t appear that the sirens he’d heard were for any of the civilians he could see. “I just wanted to help,” he said, too tired to care that he sounded hopelessly naïve.

There was something sad about the way she smiled. “I know. And I wish for your sake that you getting what you wanted wasn’t always quite so difficult.” She placed a hand on his arm and waited for him to look at her before she added. “But I think we both know that’s not the case.”

He didn’t know if there was a response to that. Instead, he glanced behind her again in the direction of the corner room. “Is Darcy going to be okay?”

The Ancient One nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “With time,” she said finally. “Everyone will be.” Before he could summon the will to roll his eyes at her vague answer, she patted his arm. “Sleep well, Steven.”

But he didn’t sleep well. He lay awake on the sofa that was too short for his legs and too narrow for his shoulders, trying desperately to get comfortable without making too much noise. He didn’t know what time it was that he finally settled somewhere with his feet dangling over the arm of the couch and one arm folded back beneath his head. He forced his breathing to slow and deepen and he shut his eyes, begging sleep to come quickly.

“Are we going to talk about it?” Natasha’s voice startled him.

He looked across the room to see her folded into herself on the opposite couch, wide-awake and staring at the ceiling. He ran a hand over his face. “Talk about what?”

“How it seemed like you knew what she meant when she said this all because of something you did on Vormir.” She turned on her side and looked at him through the darkness. “What did you do, Steve?”

He swallowed hard and stared at the stained-glass. “I got you back,” he said quietly.

“How?” she demanded. Her voice was low, but firm.

He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about this. Talking about it would cement it. Make it real. Make it unfixable. And there was a part of him that was still holding onto hope that he could fix it.

“Steve.”

“The Red Skull said that sacrifice was the heart of the stone,” he said, still not looking at her. “That even though I was returning it, I was expected to sacrifice something in order to call you back from the Soul Realm. Ideally,” he added carefully, “it would be a life for a life.”

Silence from across the room before she spoke again. Her voice was smaller this time. “But you went to Vormir alone.”

“I did,” he agreed. “So, I guess the stone made a choice when I jumped,” he clenched his jaw. “It still took a life—just not the one I’m living right now.” When he finally looked over at her, she was sitting up; he could feel the intensity of the confusion in her stare. It forced him to continue, to admit the truth he didn’t really want to face. “I wasn’t going to go back with you, Nat,” he said quietly. “I was…” he took a deep breath in. “I was going to go back and be with Peggy.”

“Steve…”

He fixed his eyes back on the ceiling. “And when I jumped, everything was set—everything made sense. I was going to send you home, finish the mission, and go back and be with her.” The fingers of the hand resting on his chest curled into a fist as all the failures they’d weathered thus far stacked up in his memory.

“And now?”

He clenched his jaw again and sniffed. “There’s still a chance,” he said with a certainty he didn’t really feel. “If everything goes the way it’s supposed to tomorrow,” he shrugged. “I don’t know—there’s still a chance I could do it.” He could barely breathe under the weight of that _if_ but it was all he had—the only thing he had left to cling to that he might actually get to have the only thing he’d ever wanted.

She was quiet for so long, he thought she’d fallen back asleep. “You could have left me.”

Her words pierced him through the dark and forced a lump to rise in his throat. “No, I couldn’t.”

“Steve—”

“No,” he repeated firmly, chancing another look at her. “I couldn’t. You don’t know what it was like—” he stopped himself and started again, trying his hardest to keep the edge of emotion from bleeding into his words. “There was no time to mourn you. There wasn’t any time to process what we’d—what _I’d_ lost. You were just there one minute and gone the next and then we were using the stones and fighting another war and then Tony was gone and _everyone_ got to mourn for him.” He sat up and let his head hang, his hands clasped together, his elbows on his knees. He shook his head. “It wasn’t fair,” he said firmly and looked up again. “Everything we did? Everything we’ve been through? We brought how many trillions of people back to life and I was just supposed to let you go? To never get to say goodbye and have to picture you lying on some cold, empty planet when—” he stopped himself again when he heard his voice hitch. “You were all I had, Nat,” he shrugged and offered a sad half-smile when she finally met his eyes. “You were my family. I couldn’t leave you there.”

She stood and crossed the room to sit next to him. Her shoulder pressed against his arm as she mirrored his stance and curled her hands together. “But what about what it cost you?” her voice was a tight whisper and even in the dark, he could see her green eyes had grown glassy with unshed tears.

“Why don’t you let me worry about that?” he said, and it felt like a dam broke in his heart when he heard her quiet laughter. It faded too soon and the silence that crept back into the room felt a little too heavy. Steve looked over at her. “What is it?”

“The Soul Realm,” she said with some difficulty. “It wasn’t…” She pursed her lips and looked down at her hands with a little shake of her head. “I wasn’t at peace there,” she whispered.

He felt his chest tighten and he forced himself to turn all the way to face her. “What do you—”

“It wasn’t…” she shook her head again. “It wasn’t painful or horrible or anything like that. It just…” her throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “I thought it’d be peaceful…that I’d feel…finished. That I’d feel like I was done. But—” her face crumpled as two fat tears breached her eyes and hit her cheeks as she turned to face him. “I didn’t feel done.”

Steve opened his arms and pulled her in for a hug. He felt her tears soak into his shirt as he tried to keep his own at bay. He kissed the side of her head. “You weren’t done,” he reminded her. “You knew it and I knew it,” his hand reached up to pet her hair. “So, no matter what it cost me, it was worth bringing you back.”

 

Neither of them slept well on their sofas and the morning light that filtered through the windows was a welcome sight after hours of tossing and turning. Darcy looked a little better—a little more like she had in London—color back in her cheeks, the sluggish nature of her movements a little more fluid than they had been the day before.

“I was thinking,” Steve said, approaching her with caution. He was pretty sure she didn’t like him—and he didn’t really blame her. “About what the Ancient One said yesterday—about you taking precautions with another time jump?”

Darcy tucked her hair behind her ears and looked up, expectantly. “Yes?”

“Even though she’s using the Time Stone to send us back, I’d feel better if you had a suit.”

“A suit?” she repeated. “Like…a super suit?”

He smiled faintly. “Like a nanotech suit,” he slipped the watch off his wrist and offered it to her. “There’s one in the watch—the one I was using. It should protect you from any extra damage.” He didn’t know if that was true, but it made sense and it’s not like a layer of protective nanotechnology would _hurt_ her when they jumped.

She studied the watch carefully and placed it on her own wrist. Without warning, the familiar white fabric spread over her clothes and deposited a helmet on the ground at her feet. “Whoa!” Darcy exclaimed, looking down at herself. “This is _tits_! I look like a spaceman.”

He heard Natasha chuckle as she stood from folding her blanket and dropped it on the sofa. “That’s a good idea,” she commented as she approached them and activated her own suit with a tap of her watch. “Can’t be too careful.”

Darcy looked absolutely delighted as Natasha bent and picked up her own helmet. “Jane is literally _never_ going to believe me when I tell her that for fifteen whole minutes, I was one of two badass space chicks accompanying Captain America on a time travel mission. I mean, _no one_ is going to believe me,” she went on. “This is kind of the definition of unbelievable.”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Nat said with a smirk. “I’d put your helmet on, though,” she added. “Just to be safe.”

“Thus, adding to my badass space chick appeal,” Darcy agreed with a grin. She picked hers up and studied it curiously. “Does this do anything extra cool or dangerous I should be aware of?”

“Gives you helmet hair,” Nat shrugged with another smile, surprising Steve by how quickly she’d warmed up to their stowaway. “And when we’re using the Pym Particles,” she pointed to the little door on the side of the helmet, “you’ll put a vial there to power your jump through the quantum realm.”

“So many sci-fi words,” Darcy mused, studying all the facets of the visor and shields.

“Good morning,” the Ancient One’s voice pulled their attention to the top of the stairs she’d just climbed. She crossed to Darcy first. “You’re looking so much better,” she said, looking relieved. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh,” Darcy waved a hand. “Like someone’s driving a stake through my head and my mouth tastes like…” she smacked her lips. “What I imagine aluminum foil would taste like if you lit it on fire?” In direct contrast with her grisly description, she smiled and looked down at herself again. “But I am looking _fly_ in this space suit, so there’s that.”

Her optimism baffled him; he found himself shaking his head, as he turned from her to the Ancient One. “Was that what you meant by extra precautions?”

Their host nodded. “Yes, thank you for volunteering yours. Now, since you’ll be sent via the Time Stone, you won’t need to power either suit, though they should still serve to protect you.”

Darcy pointed at him. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay without this?”

“I’ll be fine,” he assured her before he checked with Natasha and got a nod of approval. “Let’s get going,” he said with a firm grip on the case containing the Tesseract.

The Ancient One nodded. “Of course.” She beckoned for Darcy’s wrist and nodded at the time and date stamp before she took hold of her amulet. “Now, remember,” she looked at the three of them. “This is still going to be a shock—Darcy is likely going to experience another episode not unlike the one she had when she first arrived here. Let her rest and recover before you make your jumps home.”

He nodded. “Of course.”

Because of course, that wouldn’t be a problem. If they got what they needed, an extra day or two hiding in 1970 would be a walk in the park.

“Anything else we should know?” Darcy asked, looking hesitant for the first time that morning. She pulled his helmet on over her already messy hair.

“Just follow my lead when we get there,” he said to them both and then shot his eyes to the Ancient One. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Traveling by Time Stone was nothing like being sucked into the quantum realm. He watched, wide-eyed as the world stuttered briefly to a halt before everything started moving again. Only this time, backwards and sped up, like someone hit rewind on a video. The room around them blinked from night then day as time moved back weeks, then months, then years and decades. Their surroundings shifted so they were being moved, sweeping across green space and fleeting time until, without warning, everything stopped, and the world reappeared beneath their feet.

They were in a supply closet. The exact supply closet he and Tony had been in when they’d made their initial heist. Steve’s heart soared in relief. They’d made it. Right place. Right time. Right landing.

His relief ebbed quickly, however, when Darcy removed her helmet. Blood poured from both ears and she’d grown deathly pallid once more. Natasha was quicker this time and caught her at her first stumble. “You do what you’ve gotta do,” she said seriously. “I’ll get her to sick bay and we’ll meet you there.”

Steve frowned. “How the hell are you going to manage that?”

She shrugged. “I’ll figure something out,” she groused before she motioned to the shelves of spare fatigues. “In the meantime—blend and get moving.”

With a last look of concern, he grabbed a set of beige fatigues and did as she said. For the second time, no one paid him any mind as he made his way down the hall to the elevator that would take him to Pym’s lab. Hank Pym had been easy enough to distract before, he reminded himself. It wouldn’t take much to draw him away from his supply of particles a second time.

There was no one to hide from in the elevator this time, to his relief. He rode the three floors down in peace but for the churning in his gut that said this all felt much too easy.

Three doors down on the right, Steve remembered, noting one door that said _Bishop_ , another that read _LaCombe_ , and finally—

He stopped. A hollow, shell of a room stared back at him. Hank Pym’s lab was empty. No equipment, no notes, no skeptical interns hanging around.

Even his name had been scraped from the frosted glass door.

Slack jawed, Steve ran his fingers over the rough surface where he could still see the outline of the letters that had once been there. He shook himself from his reverie as a pair of women walked past in military uniforms. “Excuse me,” he called after them. They turned. The redhead gave him a once-over and quirked an eyebrow. “Uh, I’m looking for Dr. Pym? Hank Pym? His lab used to be right here.”

They two women exchanged a glance before the brunette grimaced. “You didn’t hear?”

His heart sank again. “Hear what?”

She took a step closer and dropped her voice. “I don’t know the specifics, but Director Stark and Dr. Pym had a _huge_ fight last week and Pym packed everything up and just _left._ ”

Steve willed himself to remain calm. His teeth ground together with the effort it took to keep his face neutral. “What um—what was the fight about?”

The young woman moved her shoulder. “Something about Stark stealing from him? I guess a couple of his experiments went missing last week. Like I said,” she added apologetically. “I don’t know all the details. But he’s definitely no longer here at this base.”

“Last _week_?” Steve repeated faintly. “You’re…um…you’re sure?”

“Oh yeah,” she nodded before she offered an encouraging smile. “Someone in HR might be able to get you a forwarding address?”

“Yeah,” he said, distractedly. “Uh, yeah. I’ll try that. Thanks.”

His feet moved him in the opposite direction, mind whirling, hoping against all hope that she was wrong. That what he thought had happened hadn’t actually happened.

_Couldn’t_ have actually happened.

But as he got to the board at the end of the hall—the one with the clunky digital display of the current date, time and temperature next to an emergency escape map of the facility—Steve knew he’d only been kidding himself.

Despite everything—including divine intervention from a centuries old mystic—it was apparent to Steve that this mission was exactly as doomed as he’d first feared three worlds and forty years ago.

Because while the Ancient One may have been master of time and space, apparently even she wasn’t immune to mistakes. She’d sent them all to Camp Lehigh, New Jersey, 1970, just as she’d promised.

She’d just sent them a week too late.

 

 


	6. Space

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another hard chapter, though not as full of bullshit explanations as the last. I always hope so hard that you guys like this because making things people like is my favoritest thing.

It was quiet in the sick bay. Strange, considering more than one bed was occupied. But while Steve and Natasha sat—digesting the gravity of their situation—on Darcy’s right, the other patients seemed to be giving them space in their silence.

She hadn’t said anything when he’d told her what had happened. She’d closed her eyes and inhaled slowly and then sat there, beside him, while the silence filled in between.

Darcy was still asleep—or unconscious, Steve didn’t know how much of a difference there was for her at this point—in the cot behind them. Natasha had changed into a khaki skirt and blouse before she’d brought her to the medics, stating Darcy was a participant in one of the camp’s experiments and was having an adverse reaction.

Steve didn’t really want to think about what it meant that no one had questioned this. That an unconscious woman with blood coming out of her ears wasn’t that uncommon in this iteration of Camp Lehigh. As far as he could tell, the bleeding had stopped—but he wasn’t too sure of anything else.

“How um—” Natasha broke the silence and then stopped herself and pursed her lips with a frown. She turned her head to look at him. “Steve,” she said seriously. “How screwed are we?”

He sucked in a deep breath and opened his mouth, willing himself to be optimistic. To find something—anything—that would make this feel less dire. But when the words finally came out, they only sounded honest. “You’re fine,” he said carefully. “I’m pretty screwed.”

The corner of her lips twitched. “Just you?” she repeated dubiously.

He moved one shoulder, trying to appear casual. “We still have two vials of Pym Particles.”

She accepted this with a grim nod. “Okay, good,” she said. “So, you and Darcy can go—”

“ _You_ and Darcy can go,” Steve interrupted her. “I’m not going to make you stay here.”

“You wouldn’t be _making_ me stay here,” she argued immediately. “I can blend in better than you can while I wait for you to come back.”

“There’s no waiting for anyone to come back,” he reminded. “You go, you send Darcy home and you come right back to the same exact moment. I’m not going to need to assimilate.”

“Yes,” she agreed briefly. “In a perfect world, with functioning tech, that’s exactly what would happen,” she said, keeping her voice remarkably firm for the tension that was stitching its way up her back. “But who’s to say your watch is going to work this time? Every other jump—”

“We’re not talking about every other jump,” he said shortly. “We’re talking about one _last_ jump that will take you and Darcy back to a place where you can figure out what’s wrong with the tech and bring back a functioning watch to bring me home.”

“It’s a stupid risk to leave you here.”

“Why?”

“What if I can’t get back again?”

“What if _I_ can’t get back again?” he countered.

“Then I’ll assimilate,” she said without blinking. “Better. Than you can. Someone could recognize you.”

“It won’t come to that.”

“You can’t possibly believe that.”

“This isn’t a discussion—”

“It goddamn better be—”

“No,” he said firmly. “It isn’t. I’m giving you an order.”

Her eyes widened and her head recoiled half an inch. “You didn’t just pull rank on me, Rogers.”

“If that’s what it takes to get you to listen to me,” he shrugged. “Then yeah, I guess I did.”

Natasha opened her mouth but was interrupted by a groan from the head of the hospital bed. Their eyes snapped up to find Darcy’s face wrinkling in discomfort. “Can you guys argue quieter, please?” she asked in a hoarse whisper. “I’m trying to die over here.”

With a glare that told him their conversation was nowhere near over, Natasha scooched her chair closer and reached for a cloth that had already been stained with Darcy’s blood to dab at what remained on her neck and ears. “You’re not dying,” she said quietly. “You just need to recharge.”

He watched her open her mouth and press her tongue hard against her teeth. “It feels like my teeth are going to fall out,” she groaned with her eyes still shut. “Or maybe melt out? And my head is killing me.”

“Okay,” Natasha said easily as she set the cloth back in the bowl of water. “We’ve got plenty of time for that to pass, so you just can just lay back and take it easy.”

Darcy brought the heel of her hand to her head and managed a smile. “Did you tell them I was one of the MK Ultra girls or something?”

Nat smiled back. “Something like that,” she said. “The point is, you bought us a little time, so you might as well take it to rest up.”

He was alarmed at how bloodshot the one eye was when she managed to crack it open to peer at them. “So…what’s the bad news this time?” she asked, slowly wetting her lips.

They exchanged a worried look and Steve cleared his throat. “Nothing for you worry about right now,” he said.

“Worry about it later, then?” she asked.

Natasha smiled again. “Exactly. We can all worry about it together when Steve gets back from returning the Tesseract.”

Darcy frowned again. “You didn’t do that yet? Man, you’re slow.” She shook her head with some difficulty. “You guys should’ve just split up. Let me die in the closet.”

Despite everything, Steve heard himself let out a dry chuckle. “Would’ve made bringing you along a real pain in the ass for nothing.”

To his relief, Darcy smiled back and closed her eyes again. “That’s true,” she agreed. “And there’s nothing worse than wasted ass pain.”

He laughed again. “Was it Eisenhower who said that?”

Her grin widened. “Patton, I think.”

“We really should get the cube back in Stark’s lab before anything else goes wrong,” Natasha said as she pushed her chair away from Darcy’s bed. Beneath it, she’d hidden their case of dwindling Infinity Stones and both sets of their tactical gear. She handed him the case and pushed the suits back under the bed before tucking herself back in to hide them from view. “I’ll stay with her,” she said, as if it weren’t the obvious choice. “We can figure out what we’re going to do next once you come back.”

Steve gave her a long, steady look. One that he hoped communicated how little need there was for them to talk when he got back. She stared right back, unimpressed.

They wouldn’t be talking, she told him with a glare. They would be arguing.

“You two have the loudest fucking silences I’ve ever heard,” Darcy muttered before she dropped a hand over her closed eyes, trying to shut out more of the overhead light.

Natasha rolled her eyes and pointed at the door. Steve grabbed the case and took off for the lab, hoping that he’d at least make it there and back without any interruptions.

 

He did. It took a little over an hour to figure out from which lab Tony had stolen it, but accessing Howard Stark’s treasure chest turned out to be surprisingly easy compared to the past few weeks of his life. With little more than a few downcast glances and one quick duck behind a door, Steve managed to return the Tesseract where it belonged without anyone noticing. He held the case in his hand for just a moment longer than he needed to when he went to set it back on its shelf. If he didn’t return it, he reasoned, there’d be no way for Loki to come to Earth and destroy New York. No reason for Nick Fury to visit him at the gym that day. No Avengers.

Or at least, not the Avengers as they’d been. With nothing to initially avenge, would they have been formed at all? Or would it have taken something worse to bring them together. Steve’s insides twisted unexpectedly. Something like Thanos?

He set the case on the shelf and shoved it back and away. He didn’t want to think about what might have happened if his team hadn’t formed until Thanos appeared. He didn’t want to think about any of this—it was a pointless game of  _what if_ that he’d played a million times over in the last five years. What if Tony had stayed on Earth instead of being taken to Titan. What if Strange had held onto the Time Stone. What if they’d destroyed the Mind Stone instead of letting Ultron build Vision.

What if—

What if—

What if—

The words alone were enough to make him roll his eyes. He turned from the shelf of Howard’s collection and shook his head. All the what-ifs in the world couldn’t change what had happened when Thanos snapped his fingers. And with all the jumping and sifting through time he’d done lately, Steve wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to risk anything that would keep them all from being in the right place and time to undo it.

With three people getting into the elevator, Steve opted for the stairs back to the top floor of the main facility. Trying not think, as he left undetected and headed for sick bay, that it was more than a little ironic that returning the stones—the actual  _point_ of his mission—had turned out to be the easiest part of all this.

He heard Darcy as soon as he pulled open the door to the sterile room. She sounded a little better—a little stronger than she had when he’d left. “The government legit tried to shut you down because you made a mess  _saving the world_?” she was saying on his approach. “Dang. And I thought my job sucked.”

“It’s not  _so_ bad,” Natasha said easily before she glanced over her shoulder and caught him with a half-smile. “It pays the bills,” she added with another shrug. “Sometimes.”

“It actually  _never_ pays the bills,” Steve reminded, pulling up a chair. “Tony—” he paused and caught himself. “Tony paid the bills,” he said, with another twist in his gut at having to use the past tense.

Darcy had propped herself up on an extra pillow. She nodded slowly. “So, you’re like…superhero sugar babies?” she asked with a grin.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Steve said quickly.

But Natasha shrugged again. “You’re not…entirely wrong.”

“No shame in that game,” Darcy said easily. “Jane’s mom is single-handedly funding my entire life while I’m in London.” She smiled. “She bought me a designer coat and gave me an allowance once she found out I wasn’t getting paid through the university.” Her eyes fell to the thick, gray peacoat that Natasha had folded at the foot of her bed. “Normally I’d say I’m too proud to take charity,” she shrugged. “But I’m actually not and having even a small amount of cash is a very nice thing.” She looked up again and pressed her palms together in a quiet clap. “So, Captain, I heard a fun rumor that there was something else to worry about.”

Steve and Natasha exchanged a glance. “You actually don’t have anything to worry about,” he said carefully. “You’re going home no matter what.”

“We’re  _all_  going home no matter what,” Natasha broke in. “Just…not all at the same time.”

Darcy’s eyes widened. “What happened?”

“The Pym Particles?” Natasha began. “The thing that powers our ability to travel through time?”

“Yeah?”

“We need three vials to get us all home and right now, we only have two.”

She blinked. “Right, but you were going to get more.”

“We were,” Steve agreed. “But the guy who created them—”

“Pym himself?” she guessed.

“Uh, yeah,” Steve nodded. “Pym himself. He’s no longer at this facility and when he left, he took his particles with him.” He saw her throat bob as she swallowed, and he rushed on. “But listen, you’re going back regardless,” he said quickly. “You and Nat are going to take the vials we’ve got and get Bruce and Scott to figure out a way to come back and get me.”

Her brows furrowed for a moment and she bit her lip. “I’m not trying to be  _that_ guy,” she began slowly. “But given how much luck you guys have already had with this plan…” her lips dipped in a frown. “It just seems like a whole lot more could go wrong if we do that.”

“You’re right,” Natasha said firmly. “Which is why  _I_ am staying behind, and Steve is going to take you with him back to 2023 where our friends can fix you up and get you back to your right time before he comes back to get me.”

Darcy didn’t look convinced. “No, it doesn’t matter  _who_ is going with me,” she said, looking from one to the other. “This is not a good plan.” He and Natasha exchanged another glance and Steve did his best not let out the cavernous sigh that was building in his chest. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d have to fight  _both_ of them to sell this. Darcy kept talking. “Look, I know I’m new to the whole time-travel game, but what’s the only thing you guys know for sure about your GPS watch?”

“That’s it’s not working the way it’s supposed to,” Natasha said.

Darcy shook her head. “No,” she countered. “That it only  _stopped_  working right when you started making jumps with two people using one watch.” She looked at Nat. “That’s what you told the Ancient One, right? That you were both jumping with this one,” she motioned to her own wrist, “because yours didn’t work anymore?” They nodded. “Then there’s still no guarantee that this next jump would land either. I’ve been thinking about this since I’ve been languishing here with my time-travel cancer or whatever,” she added quickly. “The only way to guarantee we all get where we’re supposed to go is with functioning watches.”

“Visitors out!” An unfamiliar voice called across the sparely occupied med bay. Steve turned to see an Army nurse grabbing a clipboard and a pen from her station by the door. “You can come back tomorrow.”

Darcy’s eyes widened again. “What are we going to do?”

“We’ll lay low until tomorrow morning,” Natasha said smoothly. “Don’t worry about us.”

“I’m not,” she whispered. “I’m worried about me.”

“Just act like you’re asleep, you’ll be fine,” Nat patted her leg as she and Steve got to their feet when the nurse approached. She was middle-aged, with dark hair and wearing a small pair of black-rimmed glasses that balanced precariously on the edge of her nose.

“Agents,” she said wearily, with a glance at her clipboard. “There’s no information on this patient,” her green eyes darted to Darcy and back to them. “Who is she and why is she here?”

“We haven’t been able to figure that out yet,” Natasha said without skipping a beat. “She was in and out for a little while, but she still doesn’t remember her name or what program she was with.”

Natasha’s gaze landed on Steve’s for half a second before he chimed in. “I—uh—I think she must be one of Dr. Bishop’s,” he said, remembering one of the names he’d read in the laboratory hallway. The nurse looked at him and raised her eyebrows. “I heard there was another girl last week in the same state,” he motioned to the bed where Darcy was doing a convincing job of pretending to be unconscious. “I don’t know what he’s working on but—”

“Bishop?” she repeated. “I thought he was working with plants.”

Steve’s mouth ran dry. He swallowed and forced a shrug. “Must be a hell of a crop he’s got,” he said with a weak laugh.

The nurse rolled her eyes and scribbled something on her clipboard. “Honestly,” she huffed. “These scientists—the way they play God around here…”

“We can stay with her,” Natasha spoke up again. “Let you know if she wakes up.”

“Don’t be silly,” the suggestion was dismissed. “She doesn’t need a name for me to keep an eye on her. I can meet with Dr. Bishop in the morning and find out who he’s missing.” The nurse pointed to the door. “Out. Both of you.”

If he hadn’t already spent three years of his life on the run with Natasha, Steve might have been worried about where they were going to spend the night. As it was, he let himself take comfort in the fact that this was one less thing they’d have to fight about as they made their way toward the nearest tree line.

“Where were we the last time we slept in the woods?” he asked conversationally as they dropped down, side-by-side, with their backs against the same broad trunk of an oak tree. They were deep enough among the trees to be shielded from view and avoid any of the soldiers patrolling the perimeter.

Natasha smiled. “Croatia,” she answered, moving a large rock from beneath her knee. “When we were going to raid my old safe house—”

“Oh, right,” he nodded. “And someone was living in it?”

“Yeah,” she said. “We had to case the place for a week before I could get my cash and passports back.”

“Yeah,” Steve felt a smile play on his lips. “And Sam said it was like camping—”

“Without the fun,” Nat said, finishing his thought with him in unison. Her smile fell from her face as she leaned her head back against the bark. “God, I miss him.”

“Me too,” he admitted softly.

Silence swept in around them as the daylight slipped predictably into dusk. “Steve?” Natasha asked, long after his eyes and ears had adjusted to the dark and the sounds of the forest.

“Yeah?”

“I think Darcy’s right.”

He inhaled slowly. “About the watch?”

“Yeah.”

Steve looked down at his hands in his lap and curled and uncurled his fingers—stretching them from the fists they so frequently liked to form. “I think she is too,” he said finally.

Another long silence that pulsed in time with his heart.

“So, we send her back,” Natasha said. It wasn’t a question, but for his sake, she added, “Right?”

“Yeah,” he agreed, his voice tight. “We have to.”

As darkness stretched and settled in around them, she reached over and clasped his hand with hers before she drifted off to sleep.

 

Steve thought he could have predicted Darcy’s reaction, but he thought wrong. He’d expected a difficult nod and smile. Maybe some tears and a hug for Natasha. An empty promise that she’d try to figure out a way to get them back too, before she shook his hand and thanked him for giving her the chance to go home.

He did  _not_ expect the way her eyes narrowed, and her head tilted to one side. The way she looked at them both like they’d each grown a second head. “Wow,” she said after a long silence when they informed her the next morning that she’d be on a quantum leap home just as soon as she’d recovered. Natasha had retrieved her from the sick ward with a cover story and a fresh identity to match something from a report she’d perused during a pre-dawn snoop through the files and records archive. She’d brought them both back to their clearing in the woods with their tactical gear in hand.

Natasha blinked. “Wow?” she repeated.

“Yeah,” Darcy nodded. “Wow. As in,” she swayed in place and reset her feet on the uneven forest floor. “Wow—you two really are the genuine articles, aren’t you?” Steve offered a hand to help her balance as he shared a worried glance with Nat.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Real, live, dyed-in-the-wool superheroes.” When neither of them could respond to that, she shook her head. “Guys, I really appreciate your commitment to the self-sacrifice thing, but you’ve got to be kidding me with this plan.”

“Darcy, if there’s only one person going back, it has to be you,” Natasha said patiently. “Don’t worry about us—”

Darcy scoffed. “I  _am_  worried about you,” she said seriously. “I’m worried about your mental state with how quickly you’re willing to give up hope.” She let go of his hand as soon as she’d found her balance again. “I can’t be the only one who sees that I’m the  _worst_ person to waste this opportunity on.”

“It’s not a wasted opportunity,” Steve heard himself saying. “You were an innocent bystander—if there’s a chance we can get you back safely, then we have to take it.”

“Me?” she repeated. “Me? The only one of the three of us who can guarantee that the two of you will be stuck here forever if I go back to 2013? Really?” She looked between them. “You can’t think of anyone else in this little triad who might know exactly where and when to go in the future to bring back two more functioning GPS watches and enough Pym Particles to send us all to our desired years?”

Natasha closed her eyes and exhaled. “There’s still a chance we couldn’t get back, and in that case, we’d be stranding you here when you didn’t ask to be part of any of this.”

“I’ll take a chance over a guarantee,” Darcy insisted. Her expression changed and her tone lost its snark when she turned her attention to just him. “Natasha told me about what happened,” she said, before she added. “The Cliff’s Notes version, anyway, while you were returning the Tesseract. She said you saved the world—like,  _literally saved the world._  And as soon as you did, you went on this mission to put everything back.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“I don’t know what your opinion of me is,” she cut him off. “But if you think that I’m going to just go home and be okay with letting you two give up your  _only_  chance at getting to the other side of all this…” she sighed and dropped her hands. “I couldn’t live with myself.”

“Darcy—”

“No,” she snapped her eyes back to Natasha. “I couldn’t. You both deserve at least the _chance_ to go home and experience what you saved. You’re not going to make me take that away from you when there’s a much more sensible option looking you both in the face but you’re too dumb and heroic to admit it.”

Steve sighed. “So, you think one of us should go back instead?”

She clicked her tongue and shot him with a finger gun. “I assume 2023 is where the watches and the original Pym Particles came from, right?”

“Right.”

“So go back, tell your super friends what happened, borrow their still-functioning watches and a fresh batch of Pyms and come back and get us.” Darcy held out her hands. “Less sexy than the brooding, self-sacrificing hero schtick to be sure, but way more logical when you think about it for more than five seconds.”

He looked at Natasha again. “She’s not…” he paused and double-checked with himself that he really wanted to say this out loud and entertain Darcy’s plan. “She’s not entirely off-base.”

“Oh,” she held up a hand to call the attention back to herself. “And before you think this is me trying to pull some sneaky hero shit on my own end, remember that my coming up with this alternative plan is also _pretty_ self-serving in that I still have time-travel cancer and am kind of petrified that if I go to the future on my own I might melt into a puddle or outright explode on impact.”

Natasha shut her eyes again and huffed out a dry chuckle. “You have to stop calling it time-travel cancer.”

“Time-travel malaria, then,” Darcy shrugged, a half-smile returning to her face. “Whatever. Anyway, the point is, I’m not going,” she said firmly. “You are. One of you.”

Steve let Natasha think the decision came down to a coin toss. It was easier than arguing in another circle when he knew there was no way he was going back without her. Since they weren’t waiting for Darcy to recover before the jump, there was no need to delay her departure any longer than it took for her to change and load her helmet with one of their two remaining vials.

It had been her idea to stay behind, but he caught the slight tremble in Darcy’s hand when she removed his watch and handed it to Natasha. “I’m coming right back,” Nat promised as she secured it around her wrist. “And then we’ll all go home.”

“Won’t even have time to miss you,” Darcy said before she swallowed hard and pulled Natasha in for a hug. “This is just because I like you,” she said, when they folded their arms around each other.

“I like you too,” he heard Nat whisper. She said something else into the dark curls that fell over Darcy’s ear, but he couldn’t make it out. And it wasn’t his business anyway, he reminded himself when she let go and turned to him. “You sure about this?” she asked, lifting her eyebrows. She wiggled her wrist invitingly. “Last chance.”

He smirked. “Just get back to the future, McFly, I don’t want to be stuck here all day.”

Natasha’s jaw dropped comically, and she let out a gasp. “Did you, Steven Grant Rogers, just make a pop culture reference?”

“Oh, I’ve been saving that one,” he assured her with a full smile.

She was still shaking her head when she stretched up onto her toes and pulled him down for a tight hug. “I’m coming back for you,” she said tightly.

Steve was grateful that hugging her hid his face and the way his eyes stung unexpectedly. “I know you are,” he said. But he didn’t let go until she did.

She blinked rapidly when she stepped back and bent to grab her helmet. For the second time, he watched her flash a smile before she pulled it over her hair. “See you in a minute,” she said, and disappeared with a pop.

The silence that fell around them in her absence was deafening. The sounds of the forest—the birds, the crunching twigs and leaves from other animals, the sound of the breeze—it all faded away the longer he stared at the spot where she’d just stood. Another breeze blew past and moved the closest pile of dead leaves across the clearing, chasing away her footprints and within moments, it was like she’d never been there at all.

“Steve?” Darcy asked, when the silence was almost too much. He blinked and looked up to find her still staring at the patch of ground where Natasha had just stood. “How long do you think we have to wait?”

 


	7. Shield

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Methinks you might be a wee bit confused by the time you get to the end of this fic. Stay with me: this is only the beginning of my new series which will include just about everything you ever wanted to know about Steve and Darcy's life together AND exactly what Natasha did inbetween chapters 6 and 7 of this fic.
> 
> My plan is to make everything make sense eventually and give us all a bunch of warm fuzzies to repair our Endgame-bruised hearts and minds.

 

“But if you could go back—what would you do?” Darcy had asked him that one night when they’d sat on the couch together. His head had been resting on a pillow in her lap and her fingers were combing absently through his hair.

He’d looked up, surprised to find her looking at him curiously. “Just me?”

She had shrugged. “Would you go back if it could only be just you?”

“No,” he had said honestly. Because by the time she’d asked that question, they’d been married for almost fifteen years. There were three kids asleep upstairs that they’d built a life around. A life that was messy and noisy and so tangled with love he wouldn’t know how to extract himself from it, even if he’d wanted to.

Darcy had smiled softly. “If you could bring us all with you, then,” she suggested.

“You mean if a time-traveling station wagon showed up in the driveway tomorrow?”

She’d giggled and nodded. “Yes. Exactly that. If we could all pack in—fight over what station’s on the radio and keep our children from killing each other long enough to set a destination—where would you want to go?”

“Where would _you_ go?” he countered out of curiosity.

“I’d go see my parents,” she said simply. “Let them meet their grandkids…let my dad disapprove of the man who deflowered his daughter.”

Steve had snorted at that. “I am _not_ the man who deflowered his daughter,” he’d said, and then, just to make her laugh, he’d frowned and looked back at her. “Right?”

Darcy had laughed so hard she had to clap a hand to her mouth to keep from waking the rest of the house. She leaned down and brushed her lips to his quickly. “Sorry, pal, can’t say that you are. But my father would have no evidence to suggest otherwise and you’d definitely be in the hot seat.” Her hair had fallen into her face when she sat back up and grinned down at him. “So, where would you take us, Captain?”

Steve was quiet for a moment, mulling over his answer. Darcy’s nails scratched absently at his scalp every time she made a pass through his hair. “I’d go back,” he said after a while.

“To 2023?”

He nodded. “See my family again,” he’d continued. “I’d want you to meet everyone. Introduce the kids…finally get to tell them the truth.”

When he’d looked up again, Darcy’s expression had grown wistful. “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

 

In reality, it wasn’t quite like he’d imagined it that night on the couch. He’d come alone and much later than he had intended. He couldn’t bring the kids—but he could call them and tell them to meet him. He would do that soon.

The voices of his friends were the first thing to greet him once he’d finally made it back to where he’d started.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Sam’s voice reached him first, stirring up a rush of emotion that he hadn’t expected.

“I mean I took a risk, Sam,” Natasha argued back. “I couldn’t find them when I went back so I did the only thing I could think of and I had to hope for the best.” Steve smiled to himself. Of course, she did. She’d kept her promise—she just couldn’t have known how long it would take. “What would you have done?”

“I would have stayed until I—”

“Sam.” Bucky’s voice cut through their arguing and without turning around, Steve knew that Bucky had noticed his presence. Bucky could always find him—even now, even when he was so different than the last time they’d seen each other.

His joints creaked a little when he’d sat down on the bench and he couldn’t remember if he’d thought it was this bright on the day he’d left or if his eyes had changed that much.

But the lake still looked the same. The trees. The colors against the sky.

And Sam.

Sam looked exactly the same as he remembered.

“So, did something go wrong? Or did something go right?” he asked hesitantly, looking like he couldn’t decide if he should sit down or not.

 _Both_ , Steve thought, but changed his mind. Because while it might have started out as a glitch, he couldn’t think of the life he’d spent with Darcy as anything other than something having gone very, very right. “Well,” he shrugged. “After I put the stones back, I thought…maybe I’ll take a chance on some of that life Tony was always telling me to get.”

It sounded so simple when he put it like that. So pedestrian. He could get into the specifics later, he decided, because for now, Sam nodded slowly, with understanding. “And how’d that work out for you?”

Steve paused, wondering if it was even possible to answer that question. He wasn’t sure he could put decades of pizza nights and anniversaries and listening to Darcy laugh and having her hand to hold into words. Or try to explain how it had felt to be someone’s hero, not because you saved the world, but because you fixed a skinned knee with a band-aid and a kiss. Or how even though it had been fifty years since he’d seen his best friend, sometimes it felt like it had only been a minute for him, too.

He smiled. “It was beautiful,” he said softly.

Sam was smiling when he looked back up. “I’m happy for you,” he said, and Steve could hear it in his voice. “Truly. Only thing bumming me out is that I’ve gotta live in a world without Captain America.”

“That reminds me,” Steve said, remembering the first stop he’d made. He reached into the bag beside him and lifted the shield. It had been easy enough to find among the prototypes of Stark Industries. Tony had made plenty while they hadn’t been speaking to one another. Different sizes and shapes, technical enhancements and some with too many bells and whistles to ever be practical in battle. The one he’d chosen was the only one that had called out to him just like the first time. Solid vibranium. Red, white and blue. The only thing he’d had to hold onto for so long.

This shield felt lighter when he picked it up to pass to Sam. As if it was no longer weighed down by everything Steve had hung on it when it had been his. He offered it to him. “Try it on,” he encouraged.

Hesitantly, Sam reached his arm out and slipped on the straps. Steve raised his eyebrows. “How’s it feel?”

Sam looked down at himself and offered a smile that looked like he didn’t quite know how to feel. “Like it’s someone else’s,” he admitted.

Steve shook his head. “It isn’t.”

He knew he was right. When he had opened the box that Natasha had left him and stared down at his ticket back, he’d known he couldn’t go back empty handed. He might have hung up his heroics ages ago, but the world he was heading back to still needed someone behind the shield. His team still needed a leader, after all. And if there was anyone in the world who should have it, anyone who should carry the mantle of Captain America, it was Sam.

Not a perfect soldier, just as Dr. Erskine had said. But a good man.

One of the best.

Sam’s dark eyes grew glassy for a moment before he blinked and took a deep breath. “Thank you,” he said with a single nod. “I’ll do my best.”

They shook hands as Steve nodded. “That’s why it’s yours,” he said and gave Sam’s hand a pat with his left.

Sam didn’t let go right away and Steve watched his eyes drop to their hands. The corner of his mouth slid upward as he raised his eyebrows. “You gonna tell me about her?” he asked with a nod to the gold ring he hadn’t taken off since Darcy had placed it on his finger in 1975.

Even now, looking at it made him smile when he remembered how they’d laughed through their whole wedding; the way she’d said her vows with her blue eyes sparkling with happy tears. Steve raised his eyes to Sam’s and shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t think I will.”

Not right then, anyway. Sam accepted his answer with a familiar soft laugh and a shake of his head.

They still had plenty of time to catch up, he reminded himself.

And it was a very long story.

 

 

_-fin-_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *wince* 
> 
> Hope you didn't hate it? I love you guys and I promise more Shieldshock is coming. Real Shieldshock. You know the kind.


End file.
